The Five reacts to Biden's COVID speech
The panel sounds off on vaccine passports, president's tone
The panel on "The Five" had a mixed reaction to President Biden's White House address Thursday on the federal government's COVID-19 standards and his personal reservations about Americans who remain unvaccinated.
Biden urged Americans to get vaccinated while floating the suggestion to private businesses that they make their own policies requiring proof of vaccination for customers to engage in commerce.
The president claimed there is "nothing political" about the vaccines, but "The Five" host Greg Gutfeld pointed to parts of the address where he returned to engaging in an "us versus them" brand of "political bifurcation."
"I appreciate President Biden's tone, [but] he still lets a little political bifurcation – an us versus them thing – seep through," the "Gutfeld!" host said.
Gutfeld said Biden appeared to take a cue from the mainstream media's characterization of unvaccinated locales being "Trump's America" when swaths of minority communities, especially on the East Coast, remain hesitant to submit to getting the shots.
"This is not red and blue. They don't want to broach that subject," Gutfeld said. "I don't know why. Why do they feel the need to create this us versus them thing? I know the conflicts help ratings."
"Imagine if the media hadn't intruded their idea of us versus them. We could talk about Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Democrats, Republicans, elderly and young. The New York Times says only a third [of Americans who are] are eligible that are unvaccinated," he added.
Gutfeld went on to heavily criticize New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for making markedly more incendiary remarks before Biden's address.
De Blasio, who will leave office December 31 under term limits, told MSNBC that Americans who are not vaccinated are doing harm to their community.
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"The anti-vaxxers are criminal at this point," de Blasio told the host, former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla. "What they are doing to this country is undermining our future."
"He called the unvaxxed 'criminals' … as he allows violent felons to come and go in his city, beating the crap out of elderly women," Gutfeld fumed.
Gutfeld noted that while de Blasio is vilifying law-abiding citizens who don't want the vaccine, the Asian-American victim of an assault on the Lower East Side earlier this month has died of her injuries.
Police say David Robinson, 52, who is still at-large, allegedly grabbed 22-year-old Kyaw Zaw Hein's backpack as he exited an N-train subway station on July 17, which sent the man and his mother, Than Wtwe Than, flying down the stairs.
Than suffered severe head trauma and died on Wednesday.
"Yet the unvaxxed are the criminals," Gutfeld said. "[De Blasio] is a ghoulish, worthless sack of excrement."
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