Domenech: Only way for Dems to win is to lean into a 'permanent pandemic'

let's bring in our panel ben dominic publisher of the federalist mar elias and national political correspondent of national public radio and jason riley wall street journal columnist senior fellow at the manhattan institute also the author of the new book maverick a biography of thomas soule jason let me start with you your thoughts about the biden speech talk of mandates for vaccinations on federal employees talks of mandating masks and where we go from here well brett according to the cdc uh something like 97 or more of the people being hospitalized for covet are unvaccinated that sounds to me like the priority should be vaccinating people not getting people to go back to masking but what i think is really frustrating the public here is that we don't have any metrics we don't what's the end game what's the goal what is the acceptable number uh rate of hospitalization or infection or covet deaths before we return back to normal and the problem is that the the bureaucrats and politicians keep moving the goal post we originally told we didn't want to overwhelm our health care system have lines outside of hospitals well even with that new variant that's not what we're seeing so why are we moving back in the direction of lockdowns and masking to your point someone who shares your point of view admiral brett drawer used to be on the task force during the trump administration here's what he said about the data we have out in the public my major concern is we had a incredibly important policy announcement by the cdc to recommend math scoring even for those who are vaccinated but they have supplied zero data no transparency no information why is that because i don't i think they don't really have the data or the data a week dr wolinski said in rare circumstances a vaccinated person may transmit well if it's one percent point one percent point zero one percent there's no reason for the mask recommendations but we don't know because they won't tell us and we've invited the cdc director on the show mar your thoughts about how the president laid this out and significant policy a potential policy changes yeah significant potential policy changes the president wants to get more people vaccinated that is the one thing that we actually know stops the spread of covet and the problem is that if you tell people they have to mask even if they're vaccinated in certain places in certain uh situations that's gonna be a disincentive for people to get vaccinated the incentive for getting vaccinated is not just a hundred dollars which is one of the things that he's was pushing today too it's also that you get to live a life kind of like pre-covid and if you still have to wear a mask after you're vaccinated i think that's going to discourage people from getting the vaccine which is the opposite of what the white house wants one thing he did say today ben and he hasn't really focused on before is giving credit to the republican administration for getting this vaccine up and running and a democratic administration for administrating it administering it in all those arms here's a look back what he said back in september 2020 and what he said today i trust vaccines i trust scientists but i don't trust donald trump at this moment the american people can't either scientific breakthroughs don't care about calendars any more than the virus does they certainly don't adhere to election cycles the vaccine was developed and authorized under a republican administration and has been distributed and administered under a democratic administration the vaccines are safe highly effective there's nothing political about it obviously in september it was as he was warning about rushing a vaccine before it was finished ben you know this i'm not going to take the president at his word on this because i don't believe that we ought to at this point i don't believe this is about getting more people vaccinated the real dearth of vaccinations as you know brett are among those populations who are not likely to be listening to right wing charlatans or anybody like that it's black voters it's hispanic voters who are unfortunately lagging behind when it comes to their vaccination rates what i heard from the president today is a lot more about politics than it is about vaccination and that is a belief on the part of leading democrats in washington that the only way for them to get their their overall agenda pushed through before a midterm that they believe represents a tidal wave that will sweep nancy pelosi and others out of power is to lean into the permanent pandemic the emergency status of all of these different things that will keep the money flowing and that will keep their policies at the forefront unfortunately i think they've made a huge miscalculation with this because i think americans are broadly fed up with this type of approach to things they see the case counts they see the death counts they can see that when it comes to a city like washington dc you have a mask mandate right now that has been reinstalled by mayor muriel bowser for two and up indoors and outdoors after a week in which the seven day average of covet deaths was zero they do not believe that this is about the facts on the ground anymore they believe that it's about politics and they are increasingly aware of this as it comes to the the process of getting back to school public education and the teachers unions sounding more and more notes that sound like you're going to have another year of remote learning if you live in a state run by a democratic governor that's a big charge ben the president saying that it's about saving lives and telling stories about obviously people uh in the hospital fighting and eventually dying saying doc can i get the vaccine now uh telling emotional stories and and trying to get people uh into taking the vaccine jason is the mandate part of that on the federal government for he said he wants the pentagon to look into mandating all service members and and federal employees it's already in the department of veteran affairs as far as a mandate for vaccines what do you think that is going to lead to and is it going to get broader that mandate i think it will get broader i don't think it will be helpful i don't i don't think that people who are hesitant to get the vaccine are going to respond the way the administration is hoping to to these mandates we're going to get some early tests of this political test of this i'm thinking particularly of the recall election going on out in california in september where the governor there gavin newsom has been very very careful in his approach to handling this and returning back to to mandates and masking and so forth because he's worried about a political backlash so i think that could be an early test of how uh you know a large electorate as the california is response to this sort of thing speaking of california just in the past few minutes the los angeles unified school district has said it will require all students and employees who are returning for in-person instruction to participate in weekly covit 19 testing regardless of vaccination status uh just announced that mara and to your point it's a little frustrating for parents and and but they're going to do what they're going to do to get kids back in school right they're talking about having in-person learning and they're talking about testing and um i don't know if we've had a huge backlash against testing but that certainly is an alternative to vaccination if you don't want your kid to be vaccinated or if your kid can't be vaccinated they can be tested parents want their kids to be safe they want to know if a teacher in their school has covid i mean you know that's an alternative and that's actually the alternative to virtual learning uh so i don't know if that's going to be uh become a kind of political flashpoint or not but it seems to me that most parents would would want that information well just to be clear this is if you're vaccinated or not vaccinated you're going to get tested every week in l.a right and i think there are real questions about what the teachers union is going to say and do to ben's point in coming weeks we're going to talk more about what the house is doing about the mask mandate a little bit later

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Keywords: vaccine mandates, republican party, coovid, fox news covid, coronavirus, fox news coronavirus, democrats, midterms, fox news midterms, baier, bret baier, bret baier special report, fnc, fox news, fox news baier, fox news bret baier, fox news channel, fox news media, fox news network, fox news special report, fox news special report with bret baier, special report, special report baier, special report bret baier, special report fox news, special report today, us, us news, domenech

Id: jI8pAzy_A2Q

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021