Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) characterized California’s homeless population, which is highly vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus, as a “zombie apocalypse” during an interview on Fox News Sunday morning.
When asked about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) initiative to place the state’s homeless population in hotel rooms in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Nunes responded that the situation in his home state was already “quite dire” and compared it to a “zombie apocalypse” prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“You’ve seen the pictures,” Nunes said, referring to Fox News featuring images of the homeless population in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “I’ve got several thousand just in my district.”
Nunes then said that’s largely due to how his state “let multiple convicted drug abusers out.”
“Now look, unfortunately, a lot of these people—I call it zombie apocalypse, because a lot of these people have done drugs for a long period of time,” Nunes said. “You know, they’re just not well.”
Nunes went on to argue that “one of the positive things in all this” is that being “outside in the outdoors” means that it’s easier to practice social distancing, before he confusingly blamed the homeless population for not doing so.
“We haven’t seen it run through homeless population—at least, that we know of yet—like we’ve seen, to my earlier point, in these group homes with older people that have underlying health conditions,” Nunes said.
Watch Nunes’ remarks below:
Nunes compares the homeless population in California to a "zombie apocalypse" pic.twitter.com/HHHGur26jN
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) April 5, 2020
