Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Falls Apart When Jake Tapper Calls Out His Failed Culture Of Life

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves quickly changed his tune when CNN’s Jake Tapper called out his failed culture of life.

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TAPPER: So, you clearly see this move is part of a culture of life, as you have said in the past.

Mississippi, of course, ranks 50th in the country in infant mortality. Mississippi is nearly last when it comes to childhood hunger. According to a recent study of what kids need to thrive from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, looking at economic well-being and education and health and family and community, Mississippi ranks 50th out of 50 for child well-being.

How do you square those statistics about Mississippi with what you say about a culture of life?

REEVES: Well, first of all, when you — when you look at that unborn baby in the womb, and you consider it a human being, it really changes your perspective on lots of different things.

But with respect to the statistics that you quoted, when I ran for office in and then ultimately in my first inaugural address, I made it very clear to the people in my state that I believed in my heart that I was elected not to try to hide our problems or not to try to hide our challenges, but to try to fix them.

And I perfectly acknowledge that many of those statistics in terms of health outcomes in our state were underperforming relative to other states across the nation. And it’s incumbent upon all of us to work to pass policies to change that.

And when you look at health outcomes, whether it’s prenatal care or other areas, we have a ways to go. And that hasn’t become effective in the last year-and-a-half, but it’s happened over 200 years of our state’s existence, and we’re going to do everything we can to improve upon that.

The Republican hypocrisy on the culture of life needs to be called out more often in the media.

If Republicans truly believed in the culture of life then they would have supported President Biden’s expansion of the child tax credit. If Republicans were concerned about caring for children, they would support programs to feed hungry kids and reduce child poverty.

The culture of life is just a Republican buzzword for taking away healthcare rights from women.

Jake Tapper’s line of questioning revealed that Republicans don’t care about children once they are born.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association