Rep. Louie Gohmert's daughter pleads for people to 'listen to medical experts' after her father ignored mask guidance and got COVID-19

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• US Rep. Louie Gohmert's daughter, Caroline, spoke out about her father's "heartbreaking" COVID-19 diagnosis last week.

• The Texas Republican was often seen without a face mask — even while on the House floor — and said in a previous CNN interview he would only wear a mask if he tested positive for the coronavirus.

• "The advice of medical experts shouldn't be politicized. My father ignored medical expertise and now he has COVID," his daughter wrote in a Friday statement on Twitter.

• Also on Friday, the congressman said he was taking hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, even though experts say trials show the anti-malaria drug isn't effective.

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Caroline Brooks, the daughter of US Rep. Louie Gohmert on Friday spoke out following her father's COVID-19 diagnosis, taking a dig at President Trump and encouraging her followers to listen to the advice of medical experts.

"Wearing a mask is a non-partisan issue," Brooks, a singer-songwriter who is known by her stage name BELLSAINT, tweeted Friday. "The advice of medical experts shouldn't be politicized. My father ignored medical expertise and now he has COVID."

Brooks said the situation had become a "heartbreaking battle," adding she loved her 66-year-old father and didn't want him to die.

"Please please listen to medical experts," she told her more than 5,000 followers. "It's not worth following a president who has no remorse for leading his followers to an early grave."

Gohmert tested positive for the virus last week. The Republican Texas lawmaker had previously defended his decision to not wear a face mask. In a CNN interview, he had said he would wear a mask only if he tested positive for the coronavirus.

"I keep being tested and I don't have it. So I'm not afraid of you, but if I get it I'll wear a mask," Gohmert told CNN in June.

In an interview last week with KETK, Gohmert even baselessly speculated that wearing a mask may have contributed to his contracting the virus.

"It's really ironic, because, you know, a lot of people have made a big deal out of me not wearing a mask a lot," he said. "But in the last week or two. I have worn a mask, more than I have in the whole last four months."

He added: "But I can't help but wonder if my keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, that if I might have put some germs or some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in — I don't know."

Wearing a mask helps prevent the spread of the coronavirus, scientists say.

On Friday, Gohmert said in a tweet that he was taking hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, even though medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Brett Giroir, the White House coronavirus testing czar, have noted clinical trials have not found the anti-malaria drug to be effective in treating the disease.

"It is what was decided as the best course of action between my doctor and me--not by government bureaucrats," he wrote.

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