Tucker: Some lawmakers are trying to exploit the coronavirus pandemic
For some in our political class, the COVID-19 crisis isn't a human tragedy, it's an opportunity.
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For many Americans, the coronavirus shutdowns, whether you believe they're necessary or not, either way have amounted to a life-changing catastrophe.
Millions of people have lost their jobs. Families across the country are suffering from debt and from uncertainty. Many of them will likely come apart under the strain.
So in the name of protecting the public from a deadly virus, we have wound up destroying a huge number of people.
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Regardless of your political position, you could acknowledge it's one of the saddest things to happen to this country in a very long time. And yet some of our political class don't seem sad at all.
For them, this is not a human tragedy, it is an opportunity.
Now, as a rule, it is the most mediocre people who are trying the hardest to exploit this moment. Here's case one.
In the long history of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it's likely that no politician has ever amassed a record more embarrassing or less impressive than the current governor of that state, Klan robes blackface.
As the Easter weekend approached, Governor Klan robes announced he'd be signing a tall stack of highly radical partisan legislation, mostly because he could.
GOV. RALPH NORTHAM, D-Va.: As we deal with the pandemic, my administration has also worked to deal with the 1,291 bills passed by the General Assembly.
Today, we announce that I have signed landmark gun safety legislation, as well as the Women's Reproductive Health Protection Act. By tomorrow night, I will have acted on all the legislation before me.
More than 1,200 bills -- gun control, as sop to the abortion industry ripping down historic monuments. It was like an entire rundown from an MSNBC weekend show all signed into law.
There is nothing the interest groups that control Governor Klan robes didn't get in this. They got it all.
But there's at least one bill in that stack that ought to worry you, even if you're lucky enough not to live in Virginia, his so-called election reforms.
With his signature, Klan robes eliminated all of Virginia's voter ID laws. He signed legislation that allows residents to vote up to 45 days before an election for any reason. There's also automatic voter registration for anyone using the state's DMV, including those who do it online.
Now, those are big changes, unprecedented changes, but Governor Klan robes is not the only one who is pushing them. So-called election reform is a coordinated effort and that should not surprise you. The party that won't let you think for yourself, always acts as one.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama is using this crisis to promote the radical expansion of nationwide voting by mail. Citizens could request ballots online and then print them at home.
Now, no serious person at the national level has ever suggested doing that before because, of course, it would instantly destroy the public's faith in election outcomes and hence, our democracy.
But if there was ever a time to sneak something this disruptive past a beleaguered and distracted population, this is it. The justification for all this -- take a guess -- yes, racism.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, D-Calif.: Without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the Governor of Georgia.
BETO O'ROURKE (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We need to be vigilant against other efforts to suppress votes like voter ID laws, which are every bit as racist as the racist gerrymandering --
PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When racially motivated voter suppression is permitted, when districts are drawn so that politicians get to choose their vote, we cannot truly say that we live in a democracy.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): It was the voter suppression, particularly of African-American communities, that prevented us from having a Governor Stacey Abrams right now.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Twenty four states introduced to enact at least 70 bills to curtail the right to vote. And guess what? Mostly directed at "people of color." You see it. We've got Jim Crow sneaking back in. No, I mean it.
Jim Crow? Voter suppression? The right to vote in peril? What century is this?
Well, if you guessed everything you just heard is a complete and utter provable lie, well, then you win Tuesday night's insight award.
Government IDs are not racist, they are mandatory. You can't live here without one. If you don't have an ID, you can't drive, you can't fly. You can't open a bank account, can't apply for a mortgage, get welfare. Buy alcohol or tobacco. You can't hold a legal job.
Pretty much every person in America has a government ID. And in fact, in February 2019, a paper co-authored by professors at Harvard and the University of Bologna in Italy found that voter ID laws had no effect whatsoever on voter turnout for any subgroup they measured, whether it was by age or gender or party or yes, by race.
This is a complete and utter crock -- and everyone who says it knows that. So why are they continuing to say it? Well, you know why? Because voter ID laws stop voter fraud.
Democrats encourage voter fraud because it helps them win elections -- and that's not a guess.
In California, the Democratic-controlled legislature allows something called ballot harvesting. That's when political activists are allowed to pick up ballots and then turn them into the state by the hundreds and thousands.
Why do they get to do this? Well, of course, you can guess what happens next.
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In Orange County, California during the last election cycle. Sixty-two percent of all ballots were absentee. A huge percentage of those ballots were late arrivals, meaning, they got to the state after Election Day.
A quarter-million of them were supposedly cast by inactive voters. That means people who hadn't voted in the past four years. Some significant number of those were fraudulent.
The Institute for Fair Elections found at least 20 voters whose registered address was a local dog park, 71 were registered to a Starbucks.
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Under California law, and this is by design, there is virtually no way to distinguish a fraudulent vote from a real one.
The result? When the smoke cleared from that election, Republicans had lost every congressional seat in Orange County, which as you likely know, is a longtime GOP stronghold.
People watching said, oh, the demographics have changed. No, the rules have changed. In other words, the plan worked perfectly.
Now Democrats would like to see that system come to your state, to every state and they're using the coronavirus pandemic to justify it.
IDs are racist -- expect to hear a lot more of that lie. And yet weirdly, at the very same time, some of our leaders are considering requiring special papers, even blood tests just to go outside.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Can you imagine a time where Americans carry certificates of immunity?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, that's possible. I mean, it's one of those things that we talk about when we want to make sure that we know who the vulnerable people are and not -- this is something that's being discussed. I think it might actually have some merit under certain circumstances.
This is such a sad, scary moment that you hate to think it's true, but it's hard not to conclude. Some people are using our fear for their own ends, and fake election reform is not the only way demagogues are leveraging this pandemic to put themselves in power, to capture our institutions, to erode our rights.
In Michigan, the governor there, Gretchen Whitmer -- speaking of mediocre -- is auditioning to be Joe Biden's Vice President by banning citizens from traveling to their own second homes. She doesn't explain how that might help, she does it anyway.
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In Kentucky, the governor sent goons to record the license plates of anybody attending an Easter service. Then in North Carolina, a hundred people tried to gather in Raleigh against the state's ongoing shutdown, police arrived, dispersed the protest, arrested one woman, and just in case you're mistaking why they did that, they issued a statement that was very clear here it is, "Protesting is a nonessential activity." Now, that's not a quote from Orwell. That's an actual quote from the authorities in Raleigh, North Carolina, and they're wrong.
This is America. We're allowed to disagree with what our leaders do, however, we like and we're allowed to express that disagreement in public. That's our birthright. They'd like to leverage this crisis to take your birthright away. Don't let them.