Eric Swalwell, David Frum float 'despicable' new coronavirus vaccine mandates
The panel on 'The Five' offer reaction and analysis after former Bush aide speaks out against unvaccinated Americans
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and House Intelligence Committee Member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., floated heavily criticized new potential ways to force Americans to submit to the coronavirus vaccine injection, one of which the panel on "The Five" called "despicable."
Frum, now a writer for "The Atlantic" magazine, wrote a lengthy Twitter thread lamenting the lack of full compliance with vaccine recommendations and edicts, suggesting that one way to force Americans to get the jab would be to send unvaccinated patients to the back of the line if they had to go to the emergency room.
"Seems the best option is 1) Keep encouraging vaccines and boosters; 2) Impose vaccine mandates where it can be done; 3) Otherwise return to normal as fully as we can, especially the schools; and 4) Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last," Frum wrote over the weekend.
"If, at this point, you are still unvaccinated, you are not a victim. You are a cause of the victimization of vulnerable others," Frum claimed.
He further described opposition to vaccines as "dumb ass malignity" and lamented the fact that the "malignant minority" is opposed to other potential mandates like "no jab; no fly."
LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 21: David Frum speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 21, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon )
That idea came in part from Swalwell, who along with Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, voiced support for a policy that would essentially ban American citizens from traveling by air if they chose not to get vaccinated, according to Fox Business.
Swalwell pushed the idea of an air travel vaccine requirement on Twitter Sunday, writing a "prediction" that the country "can go from 60% Americans vaxxed to 80% if we require vaccines to fly."
Kahele's state has also been home to one of the nation's strictest coronavirus-era entry requirements. Before the COVID vaccine, travelers from the mainland had to test negative for the coronavirus from a Honolulu-approved test vendor and then file documentation with the state's "Safe Travels" website.
Rep.-elect Kai Kahele of Hawaii's Second Congressional District arrives in Washington for congressional orientation in November 2020. (Marisa Schultz/Fox News)
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., furthermore recently introduced a bill co-sponsored by Swalwell, Kahele and Hawaii's other House member, Ed Case, that would "direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States… is fully vaccinated against COVID–19."
On "The Five", host Jesse Watters called the ideas from Swalwell and Frum "COVID hysteria back in full force."
"Liberals are renewing their push for a forever pandemic," he said.
"David Frum from ‘The Atlantic’ had a truly despicable idea suggesting treating unvaxxed patients last at hospitals."
Host Dana Perino further wondered aloud whether Frum and the proponents of the vax-to-fly policy drafted by Torres were paying any attention to the stark message the American people sent them with the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey where Republicans overperformed in part because of voters' frustration with both socioeconomic lockdown policies and leftist school curricula.
Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, listens during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 24, 2020. Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"And you had this other problem where you have fancy people who can go to a big party and mingle around without a mask, [while] anyone who works there had to wear a mask," she added.
"There’s a huge disconnect … The inequality of this shaming is really big. We’ve never figured out a way to address natural immunity. We never figured out a way to talk about the fact that we do have [other] treatments.
"For an example, David Frum's idea, like as you said, is despicable, and is also ridiculous because there are easy ways to treat it now with amazing advancements in science."
Perino concluded by saying that making the liberal firebrand Swalwell "the face of telling Americans that you aren't allowed to travel" would be the best way to start a nationwide popular backlash.
In other reporting on Fox News, host Tucker Carlson has pointed out Swalwell's penchant for coronavirus-era travel, including to Qatar, where he was famously pictured shirtless and looking exuberant atop a camel while its handler stood in the photo's foreground.
"The Five" host Greg Gutfeld remarked that the controversial emergency room policy proposal is proof that Frum is "a broken man" and that the Bush-era politico has been "suffering from irrelevance" as of late.
"He is pretty much just lashing out," he said. "Everybody knows people who haven't been vaccinated for legitimate reasons and there are therapeutics that can help and so on. So he’s doing this because he is a sad, sad, loser."
Fox Business' Houston Keene contributed to this report.
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