While Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) was leading an anti-mask protest outside of a recent school board meeting in Smithfield, North Carolina, The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper was in the crowd finding out why parents in the district were so up in arms about policies meant to keep them and their children safe. It turns out they might not know what they’re talking about.
Entering “America’s new thunderdome,” Klepper began by pointing out that these parents seem to think that “putting on a piece of cloth is just too much” to ask to stop the spread of COVID-19 in their community.
For instance, one mother wearing an “I don’t co-parent with the government” T-shirt told Klepper that “masks don’t work” because her child started getting acne on his face when he was forced to wear one in school.
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“Has he had COVID?” an incredulous Klepper asked her, to which she replied no. “But he has had acne....”
Klepper stumped another mother by asking her how surgeons manage to breathe in masks all day if, as she asserted, “you’re breathing in the toxins that your body is trying to get rid of.” Another didn’t seem to understand the difference between the way COVID can spread inside a classroom vs. outside on a playground. When she ran out of her own “facts,” she trailed off and asked, “Do y’all edit this?”
Even informing the parents that the ICUs in their county are full of COVID patients did not make them change their tune. “But how many positive tests in all of North Carolina have died? How many are sick?” one man asked him. Klepper shot back, “The ones in the ICU are pretty sick.”
As for “co-parenting with the government,” the correspondent helpfully pointed out to several parents displaying that slogan that if they send their kids to public school, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Or as he told one mother, “If you don’t want to co-parent with the government, don’t get pregnant in Texas.”
For more, listen to The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper on The Last Laugh podcast.
