Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee appeared on Fox News on Wednesday where she was confronted about her vote against a bill that would provide $600 checks to Americans for COVID-19 relief. It didn’t go well.
During the interview, Blackburn slammed the relief bill as a “redistribution of wealth, telling host Sandra Smith that “illegal aliens would get cash payments.”
“I have fought against this and having these direct cash payments,” Blackburn said. “And what they have put in this bill is illegal aliens can get direct cash payments.”
Smith interrupted: “Senator, then why did the leader of your party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, give his praise? And why was this not stopped by the White House negotiators who put this together, including Steve Mnuchin?”
Blackburn admitted that there is “a lot of good in the bill” but insisted that the measure “goes far too left and embraces too many of these socialistic-type ideas that I don’t appreciate.”
“Do you support the $2,000 payments that the president proposed?” Smith asked.
“What we need to do is get people back to work,” Blackburn replied without answering the question. “Because the best economic stimulus there is a job.”
“Do you support $2,000 to Americans that the president proposed?” the Fox News host pressed. “Nancy Pelosi says she’s for it.”
“Nancy Pelosi is always going to be for giving more money away and redistribution of wealth,” Blackburn deflected. “I want to make certain that we have targeted relief to individuals that are in desperate need of help, who lost their job through no fault of their own. But just to say one size fits all is incorrect,” she added.
“But you have to talk about numbers,” Smith observed. “A number has to go in there, Senator.”
“Are you just not answering the question?” the Fox News host wondered, “or do you not want to commit to it?”
But Blackburn again refused to give a specific answer.
“The president put a number out there. Are you willing to? How much should go to the American people?” Smith pressed on.
“What I’m willing to do is targeted relief,” Blackburn said.
Watch the interview below from Fox News.
