Chris Cuomo claims GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's rhetoric 'constitutes a domestic threat'
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On Cuomo Prime Time Thursday, Chris Cuomo ripped Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and the party that still supports him. This comes on the heels of a hearing in which Johnson intimated that teenage male immigrants coming across the southern border were likely to become criminals, specifically gang members or drug traffickers, though statistics tell a different story. Statistically, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes for fear of being caught and deported, the average age of arrested drug traffickers is 37, and 80 percent of them are American citizens. Johnson insisted this was not racial profiling.
“We’re past fact-checking what comes out of Ron Johnson's mouth,” Cuomo said, “because so much of it constitutes a domestic threat. You know what those other 49 Republican senators swore to defend against? That.”
Cuomo then cited statistics reported by the Department of Homeland Security while former President Trump was still in office.
“You want proof? Just name the danger,” Cuomo said. “According to DHS under Trump, there were spikes in domestic threats driven by people stoking fears about immigration. In other words, what Johnson just did.”
Johnson has also repeatedly pushed false conspiracies about the COVID-19 vaccines, at one point even claiming that it was the vaccines, not COVID, that was killing people. This is despite the fact that such rhetoric could harm his own voters. Republicans are much less likely to get vaccinated, and 99.5 percent of COVID deaths now are unvaccinated people.
“More than 200 Americans are dying a day because they haven't gotten the vaccine,” Cuomo said. “Yet Johnson is one of the biggest pushers of the very vaccine conspiracies that are killing us.”
But Johnson’s rhetoric on the vaccines has become mainstream in right-wing media, as have his conspiracies about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his dismissal of the growing threat of climate change. Still, Cuomo urged GOP leaders to find a replacement.
“The Wisconsin senator hasn’t said if he’s running for reelection next year, but the question for leadership is, why would you want him?” Cuomo said. “Why don't you make that reach out to people who are center-right and reasonable, and stand against all of the BS coming out of his mouth? That's not what being a Republican is about.”
Cuomo Prime Time airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on CNN.
Watch Chris Cuomo clash with a Texas GOP representative over 'jackassery' of the GOP's anti-vax message:
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