A few weeks ago we brought you the story of Rep, Chris Johansen, Maine Lawmaker Who Downplayed Virus, Mocked Vaccines, Contracts COVID-19. He and his wife both caught it. He recovered. She didn't.
Cindy Johansen died on August 10 after almost a month in hospital with COVID. Her last Facebook post read, "It's absolutely horrible to be alone."
Both she and her husband were active in Republican politics, both were vehemently anti-mask, anti-vaccine. Both ended up in the hospital with COVID. Only one of them came home. A few days after burying his wife, Chris Johansen was back to his old self, attending an anti-vaxxer rally. This one even had another Republican calling their Democratic Governor a Nazi for imposing a vaccine mandate on Maine healthcare workers.
It is not known if Chris Johansen cheered and clapped like the other ghouls present but he probably did. (edit: He did.) That's just how Republicans are these days.
Source: Daily Beast
A Republican legislator in Maine who lost his wife to COVID-19 last week appeared at a rally on Tuesday that featured a GOP colleague who compared the state’s Democratic governor to a Nazi doctor who performed deadly experiments on Jews during the Holocaust.
State Rep. Chris Johansen, who emerged in the early days of the pandemic as a fierce opponent of public health-related restrictions, joined a group of lawmakers at the event in Augusta. State Rep. Heidi Sampson delivered a speech to the crowd that baselessly accused Gov. Janet Mills, who has introduced a vaccine mandate for health-care workers, of operating a government campaign to test “experimental” vaccines on unknowing citizens.
She described Mills as the “reincarnated” Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who performed deadly experiments on Jewish people in Auschwitz death camps during the Holocaust.
“Do I need to remind you of the late 1930s and into the 40s in Germany. And the experiments with Josef Mengele,” Sampson said according to a video from the event posted online. “What was it? A shot. And these were crimes against humanity. And what came out of that? The Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Trial. Informed consent is at the top and violating that is punishable by death.”
Here's her comment that disgusted so many in Maine and elsewhere.
And some tweets.
GOP Maine State Rep. Chris Johansen attended a rally against vaccines mandates one week after his wife Cindy died of covid. Both contracted covid a month ago and were unvaccinated. Chris was one of 7 reps who refused to wear masks during the legis session. https://t.co/60Q3xsiVWb
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 20, 2021
Maine GOP Rep. Chris Johansen, still recovering w/#COVID19, tried to keep a low profile at the #antivaxxer Augusta State House protest today.
He was angry when his pic was taken & applauded the anti-vaxx speakers.#mepolitics @Crash_Barry @aobrien2010 @nathanTbernard @MaineDems pic.twitter.com/YZLWIYyDov— Michael G. Hein (@realMGHein) August 17, 2021
Antivax #Maine state Rep. Chris Johansen attended the antivax mandate demonstration in Augusta today & told people his wife, another antivaxer, died from #COVID19 on Aug. 10th. On Jul 26, Johansen told me he was “really really sick” w/ COVID. Today, he was maskless. #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/MB3g8w1Ffp
— Crash Barry (@Crash_Barry) August 17, 2021
Anti-vaccine lawmakers are calling for Maine Gov. Janet Mills execution, claiming shes a Nazi doctor who violated the Nuremberg Code when she implemented a Covid vaccine mandate for healthcare workers https://t.co/aWsZS6LFph
— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) August 19, 2021