Gutfeld: Biden trying to gin up fear, divide America with COVID mandates
'The Five' react to the president's plan to combat the delta variant
The panel on "The Five" largely criticized President Biden's public address laying out several stringent mandates-to-come on private business and federal contractors in regard to getting the coronavirus vaccine shot – while the hosts also called out the Delaware Democrat for implicitly targeting governors who have refused to yield to previous White House orders.
"He's an angry, bitter man," Jesse Watters remarked after nearly 45 minutes of animated remarks by the president.
"He is humiliated by the Afghanistan situation. He is upset with the economic recovery, where it should be but it’s not – to be taking the anger out on the unvaxxed."
Watters noted how Biden repeatedly singled out unvaccinated Americans, asking rhetorically what they are now waiting for after the Pfizer version of the vaccine received FDA approval.
"The country has been lied to for three decades. Why do you trust a politician or the media telling you anything? Instead of uniting the country against this pandemic – and against China, because that’s where it came from -- he’s trying to divide the country against itself for political exploitation."
Watters suggested Biden also "poll-tested" the term "mandates" and found most people are opposed to things that are dubbed "mandates" – so the White House played semantics and changed that term to "requirements" without any change to the definition, the host proffered.
He warned that Biden's decision to assert sweeping new executive powers not before utilized by a president will serve as a test for the public, as to what he can get away with mandating in the future:
"If he gets away with this, he will be bloodthirsty – Imagine what he gets away with next," he warned.
In terms of the private sector, Watters said Biden was being irresponsible with his new mandates – which the Wilmingtonian said would be asserted in part through the Department of Labor – because the very likely pink-slipping of untold numbers of vaccine-hesitant private-sector employees is the worst thing to do during a labor shortage.
Later in the hour, host Greg Gutfeld said Biden has essentially deemed the "unvaxxed" the "new terrorists".
"The Great Unifier is saying those who are vaxxed are mad at those who aren’t. It’s not true. It’s all there to gin up more animosity and division," he said.
"He showed more anger toward this amorphous 80 million … than the 'orderly and kind' Taliban. He also lied so much. The whole thing was he was blowing his own horn because he blew it in Afghanistan," he said.
Gutfeld suggested Biden is using the composite of unvaccinated Americans and governors like Florida Republican Ronald DeSantis as a straw man if conditions "totally go to hell in a minute, and it wouldn't be [Biden's] fault."
The panel also discussed how Biden is fiercely mandating vaccines almost a year to the day that he and other Democrats began warning of potential dire side effects from forthcoming vaccines because they were being developed under President Trump.
"People have to remember this is a guy that said don’t trust the vaccines. That’s the guy, the same guy who said that is now saying people who say that are publicly dangerous or endangering public health," Gutfeld said.
Later, Judge Jeanine Pirro said critics can indeed challenge these new mandates, but that they may or may not have a cogent case because the judiciary is likely to "bend to the pandemic."
But, the former Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney added that Biden's theme was one of denying the COVID fight is about "personal choice" or "freedom."
"Then he says I understand your anger [toward] the unvaccinated – he's constantly ginning up anger in our society. It's all this Marxism thing following through everything they are doing," he said.
"He was a year ago when they said I’m not taking it if it’s a Trump vaccine if Trump supports it."
Pirro added that she is both vaccinated and previously contracted COVID-19 – therefore having "antibodies through the roof".
"How at risk from someone who doesn’t get the vaccine? Would you explain to me how they are a danger? How are they endangering me?"
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