Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers told Bill Maher on Sunday he would not go on Fox News to talk about his decision to not get vaccinated, bucking the “conservative” label and instead criticizing partisanship.
Rodgers appeared on Maher’s podcast, Club Random, where the duo spoke about how they’ve been cast as conservatives for speaking out against vaccine mandates and the fallout of certain COVID-19 lockdown policies.
“So your politics obviously are not very conservative, but I never thought they were. The reason why people say conservative is anytime you get outside the box, including medically, you know, if I don’t want to use hand sanitizer or I want to make up my own mind about how many boosters I want to get – zero. Somehow that makes me a conservative. It doesn’t make me a conservative.”
Rodgers then said he bucked interview opportunities from Fox to talk about his vaccination status.
“I was championed by the right, by my vax status and I’m like – I was getting weekly requests to go on Fox News. I’m like, ‘I’m not fucking going on Fox News.’ I’m like, I don’t wanna be part of any politics at all. I believe what I believe. Most of it I based on my own personal version of common sense and I don’t believe in partisanship. Partisanship – the two-party system has fucking ruined this country,” Rodgers said.
Maher said former President George Washington predicted the demise of the nation at the hands of a two-party system, and said the new enemy for Republicans isn’t Russia but rather Democrats.
Maher then opined that Rodgers’ stance on vaccines isn’t all that unpopular or he would have never won MVP. (RELATED: Packers’ Aaron Rodgers Calls Out Biden For Saying ‘It’s A Pandemic Of The Unvaccinated’)
“I think there are so many more people who agree with us because you would not have won the MVP,” Maher said. “So it just says that what we believe about medicine is not that outrageous. And not that, not that uncommon because I think otherwise you never would’ve still got voted MVP.”
“It’s true,” Rodgers agreed. “You can have certain opinions and not make it like, like, agreeing, you know, voting for Trump, but I think there’s a lot of people that believe that you should have your own decision making on your own medical decision.”
Rodgers chose not to get vaccinated and said the debate surrounding the vaccines has become too “politicized” but that he didn’t want “to be an activist” and doesn’t “want to be a person who is called upon to give a constant opinion on this.”
