Mississippi’s Republican Governor Tate Reeves, who has the highest firearm mortality rate in the entire country, this week launched his re-election campaign with a video depicting him as Clint Eastwood shooting people of color.
Although the video (below) was released Tuesday, few seemed to notice until a Talking Points Memo article was published Friday afternoon.
“Reeves’ face is superimposed on Eastwood’s in clips from the classic Dollars trilogy movies. He’s seen cosplaying the white anti-hero, the Man with No Name, shooting at Mexican bandits with a Colt revolver and puffing on a cigarillo,” TPM’s Emine Yücel writes.
In addition to the inherent racism and violence in the video, there is no policy discussed, and not even any bragging about Reeves’ record.
There may be a reason for that.
Governor Reeves almost from the start of the coronavirus pandemic – due to policy choices he made – has one of the absolute worst records on COVID in the country.
Mississippi ranks 34th in population, yet was 18th in total cases per capita. It gets worse from there: Mississippi ranks third in deaths per capita.
Just one year into the pandemic, in March of 2021, Tate declared, “The governor’s office is getting out of the business of telling people what they can and cannot do,” as he lifted mask mandates and COVID-19 restrictions.
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Under Tate’s leadership, Mississippi has suffered a huge health crisis. In September of 2020, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger revealed a “new report ranks Mississippi’s overall health care system dead last. ‘It’s an embarrassment,’ said one health expert.”
“Even before the pandemic, Mississippi’s health care system and outcomes were deteriorating under several metrics, according to a new report by The Commonwealth Fund” the Clarion Ledger added. “The health research organization’s ‘Scorecard on State Health System Performance’ ranked Mississippi No. 51 — below every other state and Washington, D.C. — where it has stood for several years. The researchers relied on data from before COVID-19.”
One year later, Politico scored each state on their response to COVID. With a score of 34 out of 100, Mississippi tied for second-worst.
And on overall health, Mississippi is also doing poorly. Forbes in January reported on the “Top 5 Least Healthy States.” Mississippi came in at number two, the second-worst.
In other areas, like education, Governor Reeves’ record is also bad. Mississippi, according to World Population Review, ranks 43 out of 50.
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Meanwhile, back to Governor Reeves and his cosplaying video.
On Tuesday, as TPM also reported, Governor Reeves told supporters, “this is a different governor’s campaign than we have ever seen before in our state because we are not up against a local-yokel Mississippi Democrat, we are up against a national liberal machine.”
“They are extreme. They are radical and vicious,” he said of Democrats and the “national liberal machine.”
“They believe welfare is success. They believe that taxes are good and businesses are bad. They think boys can be girls, that babies have no life, and that our state and our nation are racist.”
Response to Gov. Reeves’ video has been highly critical.
Former Nettleton, Mississippi mayor Brandon Presley, a Democrat running to unseat Reeves, tweeted: “Mississippi has real problems and Tate Reeves releases this foolishness as his first video of campaign. I guess we will have to wait and see if any welfare dollars were diverted to his buddies for the production of this silliness.”
Presley was referring to what CBS News is calling “the largest corruption case in Mississippi state history.” which appears to involve Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, who has not been criminally charged.
“Gov. Tate Reeves’ first 2023 re-election video features him as an AI cowboy killing a bunch of folks with a gun. Totally normal campaign launch in the state with the highest gun death rate,” noted Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman.
“This is what Republican messaging has been reduced to, at least in Mississippi: ‘Watch me, a sitting governor, CGI cosplay as Clint Eastwood and shoot Mexicans,'” wrote Harvard’s Neiman Lab’s Joshua Benton.
Democratic consultant Brannon Miller appeared to agree with Benton.
“I know that Tate Reeves himself didn’t make this, but it’s such a perfect window into the psyche of everyone over in his shop,” Miller wrote. “There’s no message, no policy, no positive good. Just a man, role playing as a tougher man, who is himself role playing an actually tough man.”
The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens, a top political strategist, announced, “The only conclusion to come to is that @tatereeves campaign hates him.”
Watch Gov. Reeves’ video below or at this link.