CNN and other liberal media outlets are making a "folk hero" out of Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States, former GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says.
"That's the left once again in our political correctness, making a folk hero out of someone who's bringing an epidemic to the United States," DeLay said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"He knew he had Ebola, there was no doubt in his mind because he had been taking care of or helping people with Ebola and he got out of that country as fast as he could."
DeLay's take on Duncan, who flew to the United States from Liberia — considered the "ground zero" of the Ebola crisis — flies in the face of some media reports, which paint Duncan as a romantic who risked his health to come and meet an old flame.
Duncan is now in critical condition in a Dallas hospital.
"We shouldn't be glorifying him and certainly if he does live, and we hope he does … he ought to be prosecuted," DeLay said.
The former Republican congressman from Texas called "frustrating and exasperating" the fact that the U.S. has not banned flights to and from the U.S. from Ebola hotspots.
"Once again we can't trust our president, nor our government to do the right thing. They're set up to take care of epidemics, they're set up to control epidemics and contain them, and yet they can't seem to get beyond their liberal leanings," DeLay said.
"[They can't] understand that if you're going to stop this virus, you've got to stop it at its source and they've said they're going to do that.
"But at the same time if you're stopping it at the source, you don't let it come in to the United States or anywhere else in the world. You stop it and then you open up travel back and forth."
DeLay said he had many questions about the NBC cameraman who has returned to the United States after contracting Ebola.
"They say that you have to actually touch somebody or touch somebody's bodily fluids, yet this cameraman that they're bringing over now, was he touching people's bodily fluids? Did he touch a door knob?" he said.
"We know nothing. We can't believe what they're telling us and certainly we can't be confident that they're doing the right things."
DeLay is confident that in Texas, State Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat, is on her way to defeat against state Attorney General Greg Abbott in the hotly contested gubernatorial race.
"It looks like with 30 days out, she's toast. What I'm focused on is these Senate races around the country and we're doing pretty well," said DeLay, adding that the GOP could be doing better with the right focus.
"I just wish the Republicans had stood on principle more and not just run their campaigns against Obama and hang Obama around the necks of the Democrats. We would be doing much better now than we are," he said.
DeLay also commented on the candid remarks of former CIA director and defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who in an USA Today interview said President Barack Obama "kind of lost his way" in dealing with Iraq.
Panetta — promoting his book
"Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace" co-written with Jim Turner and published by Penguin Press — said Obama "created a vacuum in terms of the ability of [Iraq] to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed."
"This is Leon Panetta covering his own behind to make sure that he's not blamed with what's happening in the Middle East today," DeLay said.
"The president just refuses to acknowledge that we are in a war on terror all over the world and certainly all over the Middle East and he has completely disregarded it and been in denial or he doesn't want to do anything about it.
"Who knows what his motivations are, but what I do know is we're in this mess now because of Obama and Leon Panetta just proves it in his book and not only in his book, in the interviews that he's doing. He is really letting the American people know what has been going on for the last six years."
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