The former general counsel and executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, Todd Kincannon has come under fire for the novel solutions to the Ebola epidemic he is posting on Twitter.
There is no cure for Ebola, but there are many effective measures of containment. In the current outbreak, though, many of these measures have not been fully deployed, largely because the affected countries lack the resources, infrastructure, and personnel to do so.
The World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Doctors Without Borders, and other leading health authorities have repeatedly emphasized the need for a more robust global response to the Ebola epidemic, which is larger than all other previous outbreaks combined.
There are several reasons behind the unprecedented spread of Ebola in West Africa, including the geography of the outbreak – which encompasses several densely-populated towns and cities – and local burial practices that facilitate disease transmission, as well as widespread distrust of government health authorities. However, experts agree that the only way to stop the outbreak is to build up the region’s exiguous public health system.
But while top public health agencies worldwide are calling for the international community to respond by sending much-needed resources to the area, some politicians and ex-politicians have their own ideas for how to head off the epidemic. Some want better screening at airports. Others want a faster track for experimental drugs.
And then there’s Todd Kincannon, the former executive director of the Republican Party in South Carolina, who is perhaps best known for tweeting death-wishes to an antiwar Iraq veteran and going on a misogynistic, rage-filled rant against Wendy Davis in which he called her a “whore,” ultimately resulting in his Twitter account being suspended. Then there was the time he taunted former Senator Gabby Giffords over the traumatic brain injuries she suffered during a mass shooting at a campaign event several years ago. Oh, and he also said transgender people “should be put in a camp.” And no one can forget his history of sending vile, racist tweets – like those in which he degraded murdered teenager Trayvon Martin.
Well, on Saturday, Kincannon proposed his own unique solution for putting an end to the Ebola outbreak, which – even for a person with his track record- is jaw-droppingly ignorant. His suggestion? Just execute everyone infected.
Kincannon doesn’t believe that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization are doing enough to fight the virus, which so far has only led to one domestic case in the United States, so he took to Twitter over the weekend to offer his advice.
In a barrage of tweets, @Todd_Kincannon – who is staunchly “pro-life”, by the way – explained to his 57,800 followers why the best way to save lives in this situation is to kill people, or have them “humanely put down,” as he phrased it.
And how does he suggest that should be carried out? In the most humane way possible, of course: “[N]apalming entire villages from the air.” Yes, you read that correctly – and there’s more! Here are the tweets:
According to Kincannon’s LinkedIn profile, he was executive director of South Carolina’s Republican Party from 2004 to 2010. Kincannon now runs his own company, “The Kincannon Firm.” According to its website, “Todd primarily handles campaign and election cases, constitutional litigation, complex civil litigation, and appeals.”
Notably missing from Kincannon’s professional background is anything that would even begin to qualify him to give public health advice. Not that those pesky professional credentials ever mattered that much to the GOP in the first place…