Media top headlines August 4
In media news today, Chris Cuomo stays silent on CNN about the bombshell report on his brother's sexual harassment charges, and more revelations come to light about the extent of Cuomo's advising of his brother on the scandal.
After New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that specific forms of vaccine passports will be required to engage in indoor commerce in the Big Apple as of mid-September, "Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show" co-host Clay Travis noted the liberal mayor's decree runs counter to his party's repeated claims that showing an identification to vote is "racist."
De Blasio said Tuesday that the mandate will "encourage more vaccination," adding that it applies to most indoor settings including restaurants, theaters and gymnasiums. "[If] you want to enjoy everything great in this summer of New York City, go get vaccinated."
On the EIB Network, Travis countered that proponents of said mandate will have to "twist" themselves into a "logical pretzel" to simultaneously defend opposition to voter ID."
"It's racist according to every Democratic argument if you apply the logic," he said. "If it's racist to require an idea to vote, imagine the logical pretzels that people are going to have to twist themselves into to justify a vaccine in order to go about day-to-day life."
"That's particularly the case when the application of this rule would have a fairly substantial impact based on race," he added, as co-host Buck Sexton noted that more than half of the heavily-minority borough of the Bronx has not received a vaccine.
Sexton reported 69% of African-Americans and 58% of Latinos citywide have not elected to get the jab.
"The mindset of lockdowners, in the beginning, was going to take us to this place," he said, calling De Blasio's order a sign of the "End Stage of Fauciite madness."
Soon after De Blasio announced the new order, North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer announced he will introduce legislation that would require states that mandate vaccine passports to similarly mandate voter identification.
"If states that take federal money for elections feel the need to make residents verify a piece of information as private as their vaccination status just to return to normalcy, then they should have no problem requiring people to prove they are who they say they are when they go to vote," Cramer said in a statement.
Travis later noted that mandates like De Blasio's have been enacted in France and elsewhere, only to be met with massive public protests. Noting New York's situation as a transit and travel hub, he further wondered aloud how the mandate would apply to travelers passing through an airport like La Guardia or Kennedy; or to someone needing a bed for the night in a hotel who comes from a "free state" like his: Tennessee.
In that regard, New York City Council Minority Leader Steven Matteo, R-Staten Island, called out the mayor and claimed his mandate will create "two classes of New Yorkers."
"I encourage all New Yorkers to get vaccinated as soon as possible. With that said, I cannot support a City government policy creating two classes of New Yorkers," he said, adding that the order sets a "terrible precedent" and will lead to more regional residents seeking to do business and spend money in New Jersey instead.
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President Biden has referred to voter ID laws as a racially charged "attempt to repress minority voting masquerading as an attempt to end corruption," while Sen. Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia has called Voter ID measures "games" that are "not about voter verification [but] voter suppression."
Biden also compared a Georgia initiative strengthening election integrity laws to the "Jim Crow" policies instituted by Southern Democrats after the Civil War that denied equal rights to African-Americans.
Fox News' Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
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