Republicans responded negatively to President Joseph Biden, Jr.'s remarks over some governors' decision to reopen their states.
Biden declared during a White House meeting last Wednesday that the Texas and Mississippi lifting of the COVID-19 restrictions and mask mandates are nothing but "Neanderthal thinking."
According to The Blaze, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves quickly responded that Americans should be "trusted" not "insulted."
"President Biden said allowing Mississippians to decide how to protect themselves is 'neanderthal thinking.' Mississippians don't need handlers. As numbers drop, they can assess their choices and listen to experts. I guess I just think we should trust Americans, not insult them," he said through a tweet on Thursday.
President Biden said allowing Mississippians to decide how to protect themselves is "neanderthal thinking."
Mississippians don't need handlers. As numbers drop, they can assess their choices and listen to experts. I guess I just think we should trust Americans, not insult them.
"” Tate Reeves (@tatereeves) March 3, 2021
While Former White House Press Secretary and now Fox analyst Kayleigh McEnany sarcastically called Biden as "the great uniter" following the footsteps of former Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton.
"Simply giving freedoms causes Joe Biden, the great uniter, to call us Neanderthals, among other words, that his predecessor Hillary Clinton did, as well," she said in Fox News' Fox & Friends.
The Washington Examiner explained that McEnany meant the incident where Clinton referred to the supporters of then-candidate and former President Donald Trump as "deplorables" during the 2015 presidential race.
Meanwhile, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called Biden a "hypocrite" for zoning in on Republicans as having "Neanderthal thinking" during an interview at Fox News' The Faulkner Focus on Thursday. Patrick pointed out that there are 15 other states--Democrat-Governed states included--who did the same or do not even have a mask mandate in the first place.
"How dare him attack Texas for our policies when he is allowing the border to be overrun by people coming in here by the hundreds, by the thousands and testing positive and coming on a bus to your state wherever you happen to live in the United States of America. What a hypocrite," he sternly said.
Patrick said Biden "didn't look at the facts" because Texas "didn't do anything new" since the states of Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee don't even have a mask mandate. He pointed out that they are not telling people in Texas to stop wearing masks, but giving them the freedom and the responsibility to do so.
As per Patrick during his interview with Fox News, what's "Neanderthal thinking" is actually that of California Governor Gavin Newsom who told his constituents "not to come out of their cave for a year" and that of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who "covered up 12,000 people dying" after sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.
The Blaze highlighted that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denying Biden saying "Neanderthal thinking." She corrected a reporter who asked about it during Thursday's press briefing as a mere comparison to "the behavior of a Neanderthal" and justified it as a "reflection" of Biden's "frustration and exasperation."
Psaki said people in Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, and Florida, which are all Republican-governed states; "haven't had the information they need from the federal government" regarding the pandemic, which is the cause of Biden's "frustration and exasperation" that led to the "Neanderthal" comment.
"What everybody saw yesterday was a reflection of his frustration and exasperation which I think many American people have. For almost a year now, people across the country have sacrificed, many times they haven't had the information they need from the federal government, they haven't had access to greater understanding of what the public health guidelines should look like. And those include many people in Mississippi, in Texas, in Ohio, Florida, in every state across the country," she claimed.
