In an interview yesterday with conservative talk show host Jesse Lee Peterson, former Republican congressman Allen West reiterated his unsubstantiated claim that undocumented youth are spreading a childhood respiratory disease through America, an increasingly popular talking point in the right-wing media.
West alleged that if researchers ever do find a connection between “dispersed illegal alien children” and enterovirus D68, “then shame on the president for playing politics with the health of our children, that would just be abhorrent.”
When Peterson asked West if he thought the respiratory illness “is a biological warfare,” the former congressman responded that could be a strong possibility: “You know the thing is, biological warfare doesn’t have to be something purposeful, but all of the sudden when you have contagions that are in your environment that are attacking your people, that is an aspect of biological warfare. I believe it was Tom Clancy who wrote a book about weaponizing Ebola so we need to be very aware of these things.”
