Karen Bass: 154,000 People Dead Because Trump ‘Really Doesn’t Care’

U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) gives an opening statement during a Judiciary Committee hearin
Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images

Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) blamed President Donald Trump for 154,000 deaths attributed to the Chinese coronavirus by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making her claims in an interview with The Breakfast Club last Friday.

Bass is being considered by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for selection as his vice presidential running mate, according to left-wing and partisan Democrat news media. The Biden campaign pledged to make the choice on sexual grounds, promising to choose a woman.

Bass said her primary concern in the context of the coronavirus outbreak was its impact on blacks.

“I was just completely obsessed behind this virus, because, I mean, right now 154,000 people are dead, and they didn’t have to die,” declared Bass. “They died because we have a president who really doesn’t care and thinks denial is the way to deal with this.”

“We don’t know how many of those 154 (thousand) look like us,” added Bass, referring to black Americans, “but we know it’s a significant percentage, so the reason why I was obsessed was because when it came out that 70 percent of the people that died in Chicago were black, 80 percent of the people that died in Alabama were black, 70 percent in New Orleans [were black], and we weren’t doing anything.”

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Highlighting higher comorbidity rates among blacks than the broader U.S. populations in terms of certain health problems is “an excuse not to do anything,” claimed Bass:

Every time they talked about [COVID-19 among blacks], they wanted to talk about the fact that black folks have high blood pressure, black folks have diabetes, black folks are fat. And to me, I don’t want to hear about our underlying health conditions. That’s an issue, but right now the house is on fire, so send the fire engine and then after the fire is out, then we can talk about diabetes and high blood pressure. To me, every time somebody raised that. That was just an excuse not to do anything

Charlamagne tha God, a co-host on The Breakfast Club, blamed “systemic racism” for higher rates of certain health problems among blacks relative to national averages. Bass concurred, exclaiming, “Totally!”

Bass accused the Trump administration of hiding demographic data related to coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths:

When the book is written on this a couple of years from now, I mean, these people just didn’t need to die, and they don’t want to give us the demographics, because if they gave us the demographics — out of that 154,000 — a huge percentage of it would be black, brown, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.

Bass called for race-based federal policies to address the coronavirus outbreak. A “targeted intervention” shaped by racial criteria is preferable to treating “everybody the same,” she stated.

Asked to make a pitch for her political bona fides as a Democrat vice presidential nominee, Bass highlighted her “decades” of involvement in left-wing politics as a “bridge” to Black Lives Matter and “activism that is happening in the streets.”

Race-based and sex-based criteria in running mate selection is a good idea, determined Bass, urging the Biden campaign to choose a black woman as a running mate. She described black women as an essential pillar of the Democrat Party’s voter base.

Bass said, “For all of the years that black women have held up the party, the idea of having a black woman on the ticket sends the right message. … I think that would help galvanize the black community.”

Bass described the presidential election as a matter of “life and death” for black people. She denigrated President Donald Trump as “openly racist.”

“This election is literally a question of life and death, because we are dying,” concluded Bass. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes in whatever role, because I don’t want people to keep dying [for] four more years. … This dude is using the playbook from George Wallace in the 1960s. He’s running that same kind of campaign, and I just feel our lives are at risk on so many levels.”

Bass said her political priority is “black issues.”

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