Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany criticized President Joe Biden’s support for vaccine mandates, calling the protocols “Orwellian” and “dictatorial” on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday.
“[President] Joe Biden was handed a pretty good hand of cards and he has squandered it,” McEnany told Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. “And this messaging is just all over the map and a total disaster. The mandates are clearly what’s next, you have the CDC director go on with Bret Baier and suggest that maybe we have a vaccine mandate, then she went and cleaned that up.”
“But they’re slowly tiptoeing in that direction with Joe Biden yesterday tacitly approving of the New York [City] mandate that you have to be vaccinated to eat in a restaurant,” she continued. “This is ridiculous, it’s Orwellian, it’s dictatorial, but we are heading down that road. Make no mistake, he’s tiptoeing there.”
WATCH:
President Joe Biden said he approved of Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new vaccine mandate, which requires proof of vaccination in order to enter indoor settings and businesses. The mayor celebrated the president’s approval in a Wednesday press conference, saying “Joe Biden 100 percent said yes, cities and states and counties should do this.” (RELATED: Kayleigh McEnany: States’ Thanksgiving Coronavirus Guidelines Are ‘Orwellian’)
McEnany referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky telling Fox News host Bret Baier that the Biden administration is “looking into” vaccine mandates in a Friday interview.
“That’s [mandates] is something we’re looking into. It’s something that I think we are looking to see approval of from the vaccine,” Walensky said.
The former press secretary credited former President Donald Trump for the nation’s improvements in regard to the pandemic, arguing that “he made PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] available to the Biden administration, he made the vaccine available, we made therapeutics available.”
The Trump administration took rapid action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and established Operation Warp Speed that sped up the vaccine development process. By November, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca had received federal aid due to the Trump administration’s project.
The administration also allowed for the increase in PPE through the development of a Private-Public partnership, a contract with pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine and government initiatives provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).