HYPOCRITE: Ruben Gallego Ignored His Own COVID Measures for Partisan, Personal Gain

Gallego wants to be the next U.S. Senator from Arizona. But do COVID-weary voters know he sidestepped the pandemic restrictions he foisted on Arizonans?

Apparently, those government-imposed lockdowns and travel restrictions that went into effect during the COVID-19 pandemic did not apply to the politicians who supported them.

Just ask Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democrat now running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Gallego had no problem traveling across his district to boost his congressional campaign despite asking Arizonians to stay home. He also found the time and space to travel to Qatar and stay in a ritzy hotel when COVID-19 cases were spiking in that country in 2021.

With these facts in mind, it’s worth asking how Gallego viewed those Americans who wanted to move about just as freely as he did.

Go back to May 2020, when the Arizona Democrat told a radio host that anti-lockdown protestors in Michigan were “assholes” and accused them of attempting to intimidate government employees. During the same program, Gallego made it clear he was scandalized by the “hypocrisy” of protestors who chant “Blue Lives Matter” in support of the police, but then disrespect government authority in other areas.

But as it turns out, Gallego has own sordid history of engaging in activities that conflict with what he says in public. In Oct. 2021, the congressman introduced a bill to allow health insurers to charge a 50 percent higher premium to Americans who had not received the COVID-19 vaccine.

That’s one way to sock it to any citizens who are uppity enough to differ with Gallego on policy.

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No Lockdowns for Leftists

The congressman also persistently needled Doug Ducey, Arizona’s then-Republican governor, for supposedly not doing enough to alert the public “to the growing health emergency,” besetting the state in the midst of COVID-19.

Gallego was also full of praise for self-described anti-racism protestors who wore masks and he encouraged other citizens to emulate their behavior.

“I’ve been impressed with the great number of the protesters who’ve been masked and followed social distancing guidelines,” Gallego said in a statement released to a radio station. “The broader public should follow their lead, wearing masks everywhere,” he added.

But if Gallego was so concerned about the need for lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates, why did he travel to Qatar in 2021 when COVID cases were on the rise in that country?

Part of the answer is that a trade group known as the U.S.-Qatar Business Council paid for the trip, which included a stay at the oceanfront Four Seasons Hotel in Doha, Qatar’s capital city. Gallego was not alone.

The trade group spent more than $84,000 to fly Gallego, Rep. Eric Swalwell—a notoriously compromised California Democrat—and their wives to Qatar, according to the nonpartisan LegiStorm website. Gallego even served as national chairman for Swalwell’s 2020 presidential run. There’s a tight relationship between the two as campaign finance records show that the Campaign Committee for Eric Swalwell has made 6 contributions totaling $9,000 to Gallego’s campaigns since 2014.

While the junket’s hypocrisy is fairly evident to anyone who had to suffer under the COVID-19 restrictions Gallego and Swalwell favored, there’s also some potential national security fallout. The same Four Seasons in Doha that hosted the congressmen as also reportedly served a staging ground for the Hamas terrorist group. It’s unclear if the congressmen stayed in the hotel at the same time as the Hamas operatives. But it is clear, at least in Swalwell’s case, that there is a checkered history here—in 2023, Swalwell was removed from the House Intelligence Committee after his relationship with Chinese spy Fang Fang came to light.

Since Gallego is now running for U.S. Senate to fill the seat Krysten Sinema, the incumbent Democrat, is vacating, it’s worth asking what kind of foreign contacts he and Swalwell had while in Qatar.

There’s also the matter of taxpayer money. Gallego’s office has refused to respond to any inquiries asking if his constituents had to foot the bill for the kind of trips those same constituents could not take during COVID. But there’s plenty of time between now and November to raise this question and others.

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