Following Tuesday\u2019s deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, some Republican officials, candidates and right-wing pundits attempted to connect the tragedy to some of their most frequent political targets: diversity initiatives, illegal immigration, covid lockdowns and the Biden administration. And early reaction to the incident also provided fresh ground for unfounded theories that the collapse was not an accident at all.<\/p>\n
The major collapse along a key East Coast corridor early Tuesday morning sent at least eight people into the Patapsco River. The remains of two people have been recovered and four others have been presumed dead. They were immigrant construction workers making bridge repairs at the time of the collapse.<\/p>\n
Since the incident, several sitting Republican officials have sought to tie the Biden administration to the collapse of the nearly 50-year-old bridge.<\/p>\n
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Newsmax Tuesday that the government is focusing on spending federal funds on \u201cwaste\u201d \u201cwhen it could be going to things that are the government\u2019s purpose, just like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,\u201d Mace said, referencing the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.<\/p>\n
Republicans previously criticized Biden\u2019s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for not visiting East Palestine, Ohio, quickly enough after a toxic train derailment there last year. But after the secretary visited Baltimore on the day of the bridge collapse, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested without evidence that the visit was politically motivated and that Buttigieg was preoccupied with diversity policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, this is an election year, so he probably, if it was two years ago might have been a month before he went at all,\u201d Van Drew told Fox Business Network\u2019s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. \u201cHe\u2019s worried too much about pronouns, worried too much about DEI policies, worried too much about being the cool kid on the block. \u2026 I\u2019m disappointed in the job that he does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with Van Drew, conservative political candidates and right-wing media personalities have turned to blaming \u201cdiversity, equity and inclusion\u201d policies \u2014 a loosely defined term broadly used to refer to efforts to diversify the workforce and academia \u2014 for the collapse. It\u2019s the latest in a series of issues that the right has blamed on DEI.<\/p>\n
Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman (R) blamed DEI policies for the bridge collapse. The Utah gubernatorial candidate running against incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox (R) shared a post online attacking Port of Baltimore Commissioner Karenthia Barber, a Black woman whose biography says she owns a consulting practice that takes on work related to DEI. Responding to the post about Barber\u2019s background, Lyman wrote on X Tuesday morning that \u201cthis is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens.\u201d In a subsequent post referencing the collision, he said: \u201cDEI=DIE.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lyman told the Salt Lake Tribune later Tuesday that he had not authorized the comments before they were posted by his team, saying the post about Barber \u201cwas not our best moment\u201d and that it \u201cwas a knee-jerk reaction to some of the things others were putting out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anthony Sabatini, a Florida congressional candidate, also blamed DEI for the bridge collapse in a post on X the morning of the collapse.<\/p>\n
Maryland officials have repeatedly said that there is no credible evidence linking the collapse to terrorism and that the evidence points to the collision being an accident. But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a far-right member of Congress who has promoted baseless and debunked claims, took to X on Tuesday to question whether the collision was \u201can intentional attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Popular far-right social media accounts and right-wing media personalities, including some with close ties to former president Donald Trump and Republicans in office, have similarly sought to link what they see as liberal policies to the Baltimore incident. Some accounts even turned to racist tropes about Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), which have been shared thousands of times.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Tuesday morning, Bartiromo, the Fox Business Network host, attempted to connect the incident to broader questions about \u201cthe potential for wrongdoing or the potential for foul play given the wide open border.\u201d And also that morning, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, discussed his concerns about an unqualified, \u201cdrug-addled\u201d workforce hamstrung by covid lockdowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m one of these people that believes we\u2019ve never fully come out of all the lockdowns and the covid issues. \u2026 I\u2019m no expert on what\u2019s going on in the seas, but all I would say is that if you talk to employers in America they\u2019ll tell you that filling slots with employees who aren\u2019t drug-addled is a very huge problem. So I\u2019m making no specific charges here, because we don\u2019t know. \u2026 We have to kind of wake up as a country and deal with the fact that we have too many people who aren\u2019t ready to do the job,\u201d Schlapp said on Newsmax.<\/p>\n
Maryland Republicans have sought to send a more unifying message in response to the tragedy.<\/p>\n
The Baltimore City Republican Party in a statement on Tuesday vowed to \u201cstand with\u201d Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) in what they called \u201cthe biggest challenge of his term of office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dennis Bentzel, the 2nd vice chair of the Baltimore City Republican Central Committee, emphasized that at the end of the day, \u201csix people lost their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the beginning and the end of that conversation. I don\u2019t care what political bent you are,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Following Tuesday\u2019s deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, some Republican officials, candidates and right-wing pundits attempted to connect the tragedy to some of their most frequent political targets: diversity initiatives, illegal immigration, covid lockdowns and the Biden administration. And early reaction to the incident also provided fresh ground for unfounded theories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}