Sen. Marsha Blackburn: Redirect Unused COVID-19 Funding to Law Enforcement

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow that her Restoring Law and Order Act, co-sponsored with Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), would redirect unspent federal funds ostensibly slated to address COVID-19 towards law enforcement.

The Restoring Law and Order Act will mobilize “more resources to law enforcement officers,” Blackburn stated. She said some of the funding will be spent on “equipment, tools, and other items “for drug task forces dealing with these crimes that are, in essence, directly related to the border [and] drugs that are making it to our streets, dealing with gangs, human traffickers, the drug traffickers, [and] sex traffickers that are coming into our community.”

She continued, “Also, we have money that is left over with these communities because of COVID. So let’s allow them to use those funds to pay officers in a more equitable way and to hire more officers so they can help keep these communities safe.”

Blackburn praised Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) flying of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

“It has been quite effective because, all of a sudden, you have the elite who are having to face what is happening in all these communities across the country,” she held. “The hypocrisy is astounding to me, and the fact that these individuals don’t see that.”

Blackburn remarked, “They may put virtue-signaling signs on their front lawn — ‘Love All,’ ‘Be Kind,’ ‘Welcome To All’ — but when push came to shove in a community like Martha’s Vineyard, what did they do? They said, ‘We want to move them out,’ and it took them 48 hours to find somebody who would move them out of their community.”

President Joe Biden’s statement that “the pandemic is over” was a misstep, according to the president’s handlers, Blackburn assessed, highlighting Democrats’ hyping of the “pandemic” as a pretext for mail-in voting, ostensibly as a measure to reduce viral transmission.

“If you listen to [Joe Biden’s] handlers, probably, they think he misspoke, because in order to have mail-out ballots, they need to keep this pandemic going,” Blackburn observed. “I think the White House probably went into cleanup mode as he was giving that interview thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, come Sunday, we’ve got a problem on our hands, and we’ve got to get out in front of this.'”