Tuesday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson slammed the move to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated in public situations, including sporting events.
Carlson deemed the effort “medical Jim Crow.”
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: If you’re a middle-aged American, and some of us are, you can probably still dimly remember back to what things used to be like in this country say 13 or 14 months ago. Way back then, before the revolution, pretty much everybody agreed that segregation was the worst thing this country ever did.
Forcing certain categories of citizens into separate lesser accommodations barring them from public places, treating them like lepers or untouchables, that was completely immoral and wrong. We were told that a lot and most of us strongly agreed, it was wrong.
So imagine our confusion today looking at across the country. The very same people, literally the very same, who just the other day told us that segregation was immoral are now enforcing segregation. Should we be surprised? Probably not, but we still are.
Just this morning, The New York Times informed us that unless you can prove you have taken the injection that the Democratic Party demands you take, you are no longer permitted in bars, comedy clubs, even some dance competitions in the State of New York, you’re too dirty to appear in public. You’re not welcome near normal people.
You want to watch the NBA playoffs in person? You had better be vaccinated to do that. Otherwise, the New York Knicks will bar you from Madison Square Garden.
You can still go see a baseball game if you want to. But be warned, you will be sitting in your own roped off section marinating in your shame with the other disobedient bad people.
Medical Jim Crow has come to America. If we still had water fountains, the unvaccinated would have separate ones. But wait, you ask, is this logical? Does it make sense? Why would people who’ve had the vaccine fear being near people who haven’t had the vaccine? Aren’t the vaccinated protected? Isn’t that whole point of getting the shot? Sure. Well, maybe from a health perspective, that is technically true, if you want to be precise about it, but it’s clearly not about health or science. It’s bigger than that.
It’s about good and evil. It’s about discovering who is a decent person, and who by contrast, deserves to be punished for sin. It’s about finding out who has obeyed. And thankfully, once again, technology is coming to the rescue. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): It’s called the ImmunaBand. The Denver physician says it’s the first of its kind on the market. It costs $19.99. And it’s simple to use.
After buying it, you send a copy of your vaccination card, and they’ll load it to their encrypted server. If someone wants to verify your vaccine record, all they’ve got to do is take a picture of the QR code on their phone, and it’ll take them to that website.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s easy. It’s got a QR code. You just send a copy of your vaccination card, just show your papers and then you can participate in the life of your country. In New York, the state is doing this by itself. It’s issuing something called the Excelsior Pass. The Excelsior Pass entitles you to all the rights and freedoms you imagine you were born with, but that turned out to be entirely contingent on whether you do exactly what Andrew Cuomo says to do immediately.
Officials in New York have assured us the Excelsior Pass is totally safe. It’s every bit as safe as a state licensed nursing home, and it is utterly confidential. It’s a lockbox. Your personal health information cannot be hacked by anyone apart of course from hackers, people who actually try to hack it.
Last month for example, a man called Albert Fox Cahn broke into the Excelsior Pass in just 11 minutes. But other than that, you’re completely fine. So more than a million people have downloaded the Excelsior Pass so far, and that’s a victory for public health.
But it does make you wonder, is this the end or is it the beginning? Why should it end here? The coronavirus is transmissible and it can be dangerous. But it’s hardly the only illness that fits that description, there are many.
So if politicians can segregate potential COVID carriers from the rest of the American population, why can’t they do the same thing to people with HIV or tuberculosis or hepatitis C?
Before you laugh off the possibility of that happening, see if you can answer the core question: why wouldn’t that happen? And of course at this point, there really isn’t a reason that it wouldn’t happen because the precedent has been set.
And by the way, say goodbye to those HIPAA protections you thought you had. It used to be illegal to demand people’s confidential medical information. Not anymore. What’s illegal now is trying to hide it. The F.B.I. is warning of, quote, “severe penalties” for anyone who dares to forge a vaccine card, so don’t even think about it.
Now, we used to spend quite a bit of time worrying about scenarios like the one we’re living through right now. Back in 2003, for example, a Federal Judge in Washington ruled that the government cannot force an unapproved vaccine on its citizens. At the time, the Defense Department wanted to inoculate soldiers serving in Iraq against anthrax. Some soldiers didn’t want it. DoD tried to make them take it.
And then the Judge, Emmet Sullivan stepped in. He said this, quote: “Absent an informed consent or presidential waiver, the United States cannot demand the members of the Armed Forces serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs,” end quote. He was not attacked for that. In fact, at the time, Judge Sullivan’s ruling was seen as a victory for civil liberties.
How would it be seen now? Well, it would be seen, in fact, it would be denounced as a win for QAnon. Because make no mistake, the only people who have not been vaccinated at this point are Trump voters and other dangerous white supremacists, because they’re the only ones evil enough to threaten this nation’s public health.
We’ve learned that repeatedly on television. Here’s an example.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: And now, the narrative has entirely changed and it’s about Republicans, mostly men, so white male Republicans who don’t want to get the shot.
DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Brian, there is no group in America more likely to say, no, I am not going to get the COVID vaccine than white Republican men.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Why don’t they want it, these white men who by and large were Trumpers?
DR. KAVITA PATEL, PRACTICING PHYSICIAN: There is the kind of, you know, Republican, white men who seem to take pride in it about refusing this vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It’s also dangerous. I mean, we know that the vaccine hesitancy rates are rising amongst white Republican men. There actually is very little vaccine hesitancy at the moment between African-Americans and Latino communities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, you’re not surprised. It’s always the same people. It is those white Republican men, the very ones that just today Joe Biden warned us are more dangerous than ISIS. These are the people who have been beating up elderly Asian women in our cities, you’ve seen that plague unfold. These are the ones who don’t believe in science, who have no decency. They are the problem.
Just the other day, Joe Biden’s grumpy little flack told us that she had found new ways to reach these recalcitrant mouth breathers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We’ve run PSA’s on “The Deadliest Catch.” We’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV, we’re looking for a range of creative ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s the white men again, but not just any white men, it is the one who likes country music and NASCAR, not the ones who go to Aspen. The white Republican men are dangerous, and they can sit at the back of the bus. In fact, they can walk. They shouldn’t even be allowed in public buildings.
That’s a story you keep hearing. You just heard it in very clear terms. No group in America is more likely to turn down the vaccine than quote, “white Republican men.” We’ve heard that so many times that just the other day, we decided to check the number because not all the numbers you hear even from the podium at the White House are true.
So here are the real numbers as collected by the U.S. government. Well, look at that, it turns out and we know you’re shocked, they are lying again. In fact, what they are saying is the opposite of the truth. As of two weeks ago, 50 percent of Asian-Americans had been vaccinated against COVID. That number among white Americans was about 40 percent. Among African-Americans, it was 27 percent, among Hispanics, it was 29 percent.
So this has implications. If we’re going to make the quote “unvaccinated” sit in their own unfashionable little section at MLB games, that’s going to make for some pretty embarrassing photographs sometime soon. Because it seems like the new segregation looks a lot like the old segregation. And we wonder how they’re going to explain that. Can’t wait to hear it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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