Texas Gov. Greg Abbott slammed President Biden on Thursday for accusing him and other Red State leaders of “Neanderthal thinking” for lifting the COVID-19 mask mandates.
In an interview with ‘Fox and Friends’, Abbott took a turn in Biden after more than 100 illegal immigrants who tested positive for the coronavirus were released by the Border Patrol in the Lone Star State.
“First, of course, that’s not the type of thing the president should say,” Abbott said on the program. “But second, he said it on the worst day he could say, because the same day he said the government in Biden was releasing illegal immigrants in Texas who had COVID.”
He added: ‘The Biden government is exposing Texans to COVID. This is a Neanderthal approach to dealing with the COVID situation. ”
Abbott blames the Biden government’s “lack of restraint in testing and quarantining people who cross the border illegally.”
Felipe Romero, a spokesman for the Brownsville border town, told Fox News on Wednesday that the Border Patrol tells the migrants who tested positive to follow the disease control and prevention centers to maintain quarantine and maintain social distance, but that Brownsville does not have. the authority to prevent them from traveling to the rest of the country.
The fiery back and forth came after Biden toppled the “Neanderthal thinking” of Republican governors who lifted the COVID-19 mask mandates in Texas and Mississippi.
“The last thing, the last thing you need is for Neanderthaler to think that everything is fine in the meantime, take off your mask,” he told reporters.
But on Thursday, Abbott defended the move, telling CNBC that Texans already know that “the safe standard, among other things, is to wear a mask.”
“Do they really need the state to tell them what they already know for their own personal behavior?” Abbott said.