SC Gov. McMaster criticizes Democratic governors for COVID-19 shutdowns at GOP dinner
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster dinged Democratic governors in states that shut down businesses and restricted “people’s rights” to deal with their states COVID-19 outbreak in a speech Friday night at the South Carolina Republican Party’s Silver Elephant Dinner.
The dinner, an annual party fundraiser that enforced two temperature checks upon entrance, this year required an adherence to social distancing and mask wearing, unless for eating and drinking. But guests, which included statewide elected officials and lawmakers, were seen largely without masks beyond their tables, while some guests greeted one another with kisses on the cheeks and posed for photographs.
In some states, governors shut down auto plants, McMaster said. “In some places, they even shut down churches,” he added.
South Carolina is still grappling with its statewide COVID-19 outbreak, particularly as students return to college campuses and other schools reopen for in person instruction. On Friday, the state’s health department reported more than 900 new positive coronavirus cases, bringing the state’s new statewide total since March to 126,792. Nearly 2,900 people have died as a result of COVID-19.
In its 53rd year, the S.C. GOP hosted its first-ever female keynote speaker, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who quipped that usually when she comes to a podium, “they’re not very excited to see me.”
In her remarks — which threaded between stories of being a working mom at the White House and President Donald Trump’s 2018 unannounced trip to a U.S. base in Iraq — Sanders, like several of the other speakers, drove a message to Republicans in the room that if the country wants to see “real chaos” in America, voters must not allow Democrats to win in November.
“If we want to see real chaos in America, we can’t allow Democrats to take over Washington and let the liberal mob destroy it,” Sanders said. “If we want to see real chaos in America, we can’t allow the liberal mob to unleash violence in our cities.”
The only thing standing between the “real chaos and the liberal mob is people like you,” she said.
Included in the room at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Friday was U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who faces what is arguably his most competitive U.S. Senate race in years against Democrat Jaime Harrison.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to piss so many people off. ... But every liberal wants to take me out because of my support for Brett Kavanaugh and Trump,” Graham said, referring in part to now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom Graham defended during his Senate confirmation hearing as Kavanaugh faced decades-old sexual assault allegations.
“I welcome the challenge.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 10:33 PM.
