Louie Gohmert: CDC Has Collective Heads 'Up Where the Sun Doesn't Shine

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Wednesday that the American public should have no trust in the Centers for Disease Control after it failed to impose protocols in Dallas to stop the spread of Ebola, and then blamed nurses for contracting the virus.

The CDC initially indicated that the Dallas nurse who was treating the first Ebola patient, Thomas Duncan, somehow violated a safety protocol, and that allowed the virus to spread. But a nurse group on Wednesday day there were no protocols, and that practices were changing daily in Dallas when dealing with Duncan.

"Clearly there were protocols breached, but it wasn't by the nurses," Gohmert said on WBPA radio. "It was by the CDC collectively having their heads up where the sun doesn't shine."

"It is outrageous that we have a CDC, and the best they can do is to blame people that get the disease for breaching non-existant protocols," Gohmert said.

"How can we have faith in a Centers for Disease Control that immediately blames people with the disease without even knowing how they got it?" he asked. "I mean, you can't have faith in a group like that."

Gohmert laid part of the blame on President Barack Obama, who said the chances that Ebola would come to America were very low. He said Obama's words were not backed up by any visible, effective policy to actually stop Ebola.

"I think that in his own mind he's not lying," he said. "He really does believe that if he says something, that it must be true, even though there were no protocols in place."

"He just said it, and expected that by saying it, everyone would be safe," Gohmert added.

Gohmert also seized on the CDC's admission that it still doesn't know exactly how the virus was spread to two health care workers. That, he said, means the CDC can't say with any certainty what rule either nurse might have violated.

"Until the CDC actually gets to the bottom of how it's being spread, they can't say if anyone breached [protocol]," he said.

On Wednesday, health officials were struggling to deal with a second nurse who contracted the virus, and flew from Cleveland, sparking fears of wider exposure. President Barack Obama was expected to hold a cabinet meeting in the afternoon, and make brief public remarks about Ebola.