Rep. Devin Nunes is defending himself and attacking the media after a segment of him discussing the coronavirus went viral over the weekend.
The California Republican appeared on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures and argued that it’s not necessary for people to be racing to grocery stores to stock up on supplies during the pandemic. He then suggested healthy people should go to their local restaurants to help out small businesses, but his recommendations soon faced scrutiny.
“In many places outside Washington, including in our district of California, there is panic buying and hoarding of food and household supplies. There are crowded runs on stores, which pose many problems including enabling the spread of the coronavirus,” Nunes spokesman Jack Langer told the Washington Examiner Monday.
“The full context of Rep. Nunes’s remarks, which hardly any of the media provided, showed him warning against this kind of panic, assuring that we have plenty of food, warning the sick to stay home, recognizing the elderly are most vulnerable, and encouraging healthy people to have a meal at an empty restaurant instead of panic-buying food at grocery stores.”
The lawmaker’s spokesman then pivoted to accusing the media of intentionally using the remarks to give him bad publicity.
“The mainstream media predictably took these comments out of context in order to generate hit pieces on someone they consider to be their political opponent,” Langer continued. “That the media even exploits the coronavirus as an opportunity to settle political scores is a sad testament to the degradation of the reporting profession.”
During the segment with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, Nunes urged people to “stop panicking” and suggested health officials “focus all of our energy on our senior population with underlying health concerns.” He also added that there “is no reason” for people to “buy 27 packs of toilet paper.”
Nunes, who has previously accused the “media and the Left” of inciting panic, later said: “There’s a lot of concerns with the economy here because people are scared to go out, but I will just say one of the things you can do — if you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily.”
He added: “Let’s not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small business going. … Just don’t run to the grocery store and buy, you know, $4,000 of food. Go to your local pub.”
A number of cities have implemented restrictions on restaurants to curb the spread of the virus. California, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Washington were some of the first states to close bars, restaurants, and wineries, according to USA Today.
There have been nearly 175,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide and more than 6,700 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
