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A short mad thread: Last night, I reported that @RepJayapal had tested positive for COVID after having been sequestered during the Capitol siege with Republican colleagues, some of whom refused to wear masks: https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/rep-jayapal-tests-positive-for-covid-after-capitol-riots.html
Today I woke to many self-satisfied people tweeting me some version of this photo, showing Jayapal, on Weds, not wearing her own mask. Hey, great catch, gob-rockets! That thing you see in her right hand? It is the gas mask she's been asked to put on by Capitol police.
Look again at this photo of terrified people, trapped in the gallery of the House of Representatives as armed invaders--carrying guns and zip-ties--break the glass of the chamber. They have heard shots fired & they have been instructed to put on the escape hood gas masks.
Rep. Jayapal spoke with me last week about that day, & said: "They told us to take off our masks to put on the gas masks that were under our seats." That's the picture you all are posting. Thanks for finding an illustration of their raw fear & confusion. https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/pramila-jayapal-surviving-capitol-riots.html
Those of you thinking you're owning Jayapal in defense of maskless, potentially contagious Republicans have surely seen the video of many of those Repubs refusing and mocking masks offered to them in the secure House room by Del Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/politics/republican-congress-members-refuse-masks-trnd/index.html
Among them: Rep. Andy Biggs, who @theintercept reported helped organize events that culminated w/ attack on Capitol, during which @RepJayapal was forced to don a gas mask, shelter in a room w him & other mask-refusers, & at which she may have caught COVID https://theintercept.com/2021/01/11/capitol-plot-andy-biggs-paul-gosar/
Another who laughed off Lisa Blunt Rochester was Ga Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had earlier made reference to the gatherings that day as Republicans' "1776 moment:" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/politics/republicans-capitol-riot.html
Some of @RepJayapal's colleagues were endangering the lives of their fellow congresspeople, as well as the reporters who cover them, the administrative, custodial & food service staff who work with them, & the residents of Washington D.C., in multiple directions simultaneously.
So consider that that picture of a now-COVID positive Congresswoman who was w/out her mask bc she was trying to not get killed by terrorists incited by some colleagues who also refused to wear masks in midst of a deadly pandemic may not be making the point you think it's making.
