Michele Bachmann: Obama wants to use refugee children for “medical research”

The Tea Party star comes up with a bizarre, "sick" theory of the president's true intentions (UPDATE)

Published July 31, 2014 2:03PM (EDT)

Michele Bachmann                                 (Reuters/Larry Downing)
Michele Bachmann (Reuters/Larry Downing)

UPDATE: Bachmann's communications director, Dan Kotman, has sent Salon the following message in response to this story:

This is a classic case of liberal media outlets once again twisting the Congresswoman’s words. As a foster mom of 23, she has a long track record of standing up for foster children and orphans. Her concern was that our foster care system, which is already short on foster care parents, would not have the capacity to handle this surge of unaccompanied children. And a child without parents to advocate on their behalf could be vulnerable to what Justina Pelletier experienced as a ward of the state, which is why the Congresswoman introduced a bipartisan bill to help protect our most vulnerable. Your sensational headline is a gross misrepresentation of what she actually said and what Justina’s Law actually does.

ORIGINAL STORY: She's got less than a year before she leaves public office, maybe for good, and GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann has evidently decided to spend that time doing what she does best: Saying utterly crazy things about President Obama.

Appearing on a far-right radio show on Wednesday in order to promote an unnecessary and unhinged law she's introduced in the House — a law that relies on a bizarre misreading of already-passed legislation in order to ban the government from conducting medical experiments "on a ward of the State" — Bachmann asserted that the reason President Obama hasn't solved the refugee crisis at the U.S. southern border is because he wants to use the child refugees for "medical research."

"President Obama is trying to bring all of those foreign nationals, those illegal aliens to the country and he has said that he will put them in the foster care system," Bachmann explained.

"[W]e can't imagine doing this, but if you have a hospital and they are going to get millions of dollars in government grants if they can conduct medical research on somebody, and a Ward of the state can't say 'no' — a little kid can't say 'no' if they're a Ward of the state — so here you could have this institution getting millions of dollars from our government to do medical experimentation and a kid can't even say 'no,'" Bachmann said. "It's sick."

While the argument that Obama and Democrats are secretly encouraging a border crisis in order to force through immigration reform (or cause the GOP to make the politically self-destructive move of trying to impeach him), Bachmann's contention that the whole affair is about turning human beings into guinea pigs for experimentation is a new one. The woman is nothing if not creative.

You can listen to Bachmann's latest gem below, via Right Wing Watch:


By Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a former Salon staff writer.

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