Fox's Tomi Lahren: “Nothing made me feel more proud to be an American” than seeing images of anti-vax protests
In the same segment, Fox host Emily Compagno likens efforts to vaccinate Americans to “a really tragic chapter in our globe's history”
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From the Monday, October 25, 2021 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
EMILY COMPAGNO (CO-HOST): Fox News alert happening right now. Thousands of New York City police officers, firefighters, and city employees are marching across the Brooklyn Bridge in protest of the city's vaccine mandate. Many are wearing their job t-shirts and holding my body my choice signs, as well as the American flag. Mayor de Blasio has warned city workers that if they do not get the vaccine by Friday, they will be put on unpaid leave. And now, the CDC is planning to quote 'educate' those who are hesitant to get the shot. Here is CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
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ROCHELLE WALENSKY (CDC DIRECTOR) We believe it is very important to get these people vaccinated. There's a plan, should these people not want to get vaccinated toward education and counseling to get people the information they need so that they are feeling comfortable in getting vaccinated.
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COMPAGNO: Vivek, something about the phrase reeducation and get these people on board seems pretty strikingly to a really tragic chapter in our globe's history.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well look, when I see those images of people protesting, I don't see vaccines of COVID-19 being at the heart of the issue. I see public trust in our leaders as being the heart of that issue.
And here's an interesting fact, Emily. The majority of people who are refusing COVID-19 vaccinations actually have been voluntarily vaccinated against mumps, measles, rubella, tetatnus, dpt, diphtheria. I could continue to go on. You have to ask yourself why. And it is because when it came to COVID-19, our public health leaders have lied and lied rampantly. We actually saw last week, the NIH shyly admitting the fact that actually, it had been lying to the public, about having funded gain-of-function research, the very kind of research in the Wuhan lab that could have resulted in the origins of this pandemic, they lied about it. Now, a lot of people would may say that vaccinations and the origin of the pandemic, those are two different issues; It's not. When it comes to COVID-19, public leaders, including public health leaders, have given the public no reason to trust them. Mark my words, it is only going to make the problem of public trust even worse if you force people to accept something that they don't automatically trust on their own. And I say this as somebody who wishes that more people were vaccinated and the people who are responsible for that are the public health leaders and the leaders of our institutions who have been rampantly lying at every step from the origin of this pandemic to what to do about it. And that's what we need to own up to to fix it.
COMPAGNO: And Tomi on that note of public elected officials and public leadership, it was they who designated first responders, firefighters, and law enforcement, and health workers as the heroes of the pandemic. And all of a sudden the tone has shifted mightily, and we have all the way up to our president saying that we should be angry, condemning those who have chosen not to be vaccinated or, as Vivek points out, simply resist the mandate even if they themselves are vaccinated. These men and women are absolutely the backbone of our society. We know that they are heroes every day and they are public servants and yet now they are being cast aside and vilified as public enemy number one.
TOMI LAHREN: Let's also juxtapose this to what we just discussed in our first segment, illegal immigration. We've got Americans, law-abiding Americans, decent hard-working Americans, who have been going to work for two years during a pandemic, dealing with health risks, safety risks and doing it because they needed to do their job to put food on table for their families. Those decent, law-abiding, hardworking Americans, are now being treated like criminals and you have hundreds of thousands, now well over a million illegal immigrants who have invaded into this country and they are being treated like upstanding citizens.
But I would also like to say this. When we see this protest in Brooklyn and we see these workers standing up, when I saw those images, nothing made me feel more proud to be an American. Because I saw Americans of every color, every shape, every size, every gender, probably and every political affiliation, standing together in the name of freedom. That's American as it gets, and I'm so proud of my fellow Americans for standing up.