Louisiana Voice

Clay Higgins, like Donald Trump, just won’t shut up. Or we just can’t get enough of him—depending, of course, on your political perspective.

And like Trump, the distortions continue to spew forth unchecked.

It’s enough to make you wonder if Abe Lincoln may have been thinking of Higgins when he said you can fool some of the people all the time—at least enough of the people in Louisiana’s 3^rd Congressional District to get a deadbeat dad (deadbeat as something on the order of $100,000 in arrears on child support payments) elected to congress. (he is on tape telling one of his ex-wives not to worry about the child support payments because once he’s in congress, “there’s going to be a lot of money floating around…”)

This time, he appeared on CNN to claim that face masks, rather than serving as protection against the coronavirus, are little more than “bacteria traps.”

And as usual, he draws on his vast experience as a former law enforcement officer to back up his claim.

Except that that vast experience, like so many of his other claims, are “vastly embellished.”

Bottom line is the former used car salesman turned Opelousas cop turned St. Landry sheriff’s deputy turned reserve deputy for embattled Lafayette city marshal turned member of congress is a habitual prevaricator who is every bit the self-promoter as his apparent role model in the Oval Office.

If there was such thing as a road trip in a clown car, Higgins might not be the driver, but he’d certainly be a passenger—most probably holding the road map upside down.

In May 2019, Higgins, sitting on the House Oversight and Reform Committee (how ironic is that?) during former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony, alluded to the “thousands” of persons he’d arrested as a law enforcement officer (he was a public information officer for St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz who ultimately fired him).

Guidroz, contacted by LouisianaVoice, said he could find records of no more than about half-a-dozen arrests made by Higgins. You can read Stephanie Grace’s story about the exchange between Higgins and Cohen HERE.

In my book, Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, I devote an entire chapter (six pages) to Higgins’s exploits as a fearless lawman and member of congress. The book is $30 and can be purchased by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button in the column to the right of this post. You may also purchase the book by sending a check for $30 to LouisianaVoice, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, LA. 70727.

But back to our story. Higgins’s latest foot-in-mouth episode involves his bizarre claim that face masks trap bacteria rather than protecting wearers from the coronavirus. He based his “different medical opinion” on his claim to having made numerous trips to hospitals—apparently with victims and perps (he didn’t bother to elaborate). He said nurses and doctors weren’t wearing face coverings then, he said.

Putting aside the inconvenient (for Higgins) fact that the coronavirus is a viral, not bacterial, infection (hence, the word “virus” in its name), wouldn’t it be fair to say that the very objective of face masks is to “trap” the infection, thus preventing its spread to others?

In other words if someone, say Clay Higgins, were infected with coronavirus, then the wearing of a face mask would serve as a “trap” and prevent the spread of the disease to others when Higgins opened his mouth to speak—which is pretty often, it seems.

Higgins, of course, being the champion of the right to attend religious services that he is (he probably attends services with Trump), opposed the lockdown order of Gov. John Bel Edwards as it applied to a church in the East Baton Rouge Parish city of Central.

Perhaps, then, he may wish to explain how Louisiana came to have the 9^th -highest number of COVID-19 deaths (232) during the seven days as of May 25; the 8^th-highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases (811 per 100,000 population) as of May 25 (37,809 total), and the 15^th-highest average umber of new cases during the seven days as of May 25 (410 total average daily new cases), according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).