NYT: ‘Nurse’ Lauren Underwood ‘Never Worked Specifically with Patients’

The New York Times has confirmed what Republican opponents of first-term Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) have said since last year: that her nursing career is somewhat exaggerated.

Underwood, who unseated incumbent Republican Randy Hultgren in 2018 to win Illinois’ 14th congressional district seat in Chicago’s far western perimeter, portrayed herself as a working nurse in campaign advertisements.

But as Breitbart News noted last year, she had never actually practiced as a nurse (original links):

The Kane County Reporter dug into Underwood’s claims and found that while she had studied nursing and was a registered to practice nursing, “she never has, in Illinois, nor anywhere else.”

Instead, when she completed her education, Underwood worked for the Obama administration on Obamacare’s rollout — a project that was a disaster when it launched in 2013. (She now admits it was “not perfect.”)

The Kane County Reporter also noted that Underwood had claimed, “as a nurse, I have looked into my patients’ eyes when giving discharge instructions knowing they cannot afford the prescription that we’re handing to them.”

However, as the New York Times reported Wednesday, she had not actually worked directly with patients.

The Times article was about a “ruthless” advertising campaign by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which is focusing directly on the weaknesses of Democratic incumbents. In the course of critiquing the NRCC, however, the Times appeared to confirm Republicans’ underlying claims:

The National Republican Congressional Committee, with the blessing of House Republican leaders, has adopted a no-holds-barred strategy to win back the House majority next year, borrowing heavily from President Trump’s playbook in deploying such taunts and name-calling. After losing 40 seats and the House majority in November, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the committee’s new chairman, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, decided that their messaging needed to be ruthless.

…

Ms. Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, is “Fake Nurse Lauren.” (Ms. Underwood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Michigan and worked as a research nurse, never worked specifically with patients.)

In May, Underwood accused Republicans of murdering children — a claim so extreme that committee members voted to have it taken down from the record.

In a statement Wednesday, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, said: “We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Unhinged Underwood is a fake nurse and fake moderate.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.