Sunday, during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms offered possible motives to Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R-GA) decision to legally challenge her city’s ordinance mandating masks and other measures implemented in the name of combating COVID-19.
The Atlanta Mayor denied the city’s civil unrest had anything to do with the spikes in cases and argued that instead there she might be singled out for her sex or the “demographic” in Atlanta.
“Well, I have actually not seen any data or science that points to that,” she said. “But what I have seen data on is that, when the governor reopened our state, people from across the country came to our state. We’ve seen that tracked with cell phone data because we were open for business as if we were not in the midst of a pandemic. And the governor has done many things as of late and said many things as of late that, quite frankly, are simply bizarre. He filed a 124-plus-page lawsuit against me this week, calling for an emergency injunction to stop me from speaking about his orders.”
“If the governor of this state had his way, I would not be allowed to speak with you today,” Bottoms said. “And so this blame game is most unusual. There were other cities in our state who instituted mask mandates, and he did not push back against them. I don’t know if it’s because perhaps they were led by men or if it’s perhaps because of the demographic in the city of Atlanta. I don’t know what the answers are, but what I do know is that the science is on our side.”
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