White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to indulge Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy‘s attempt to fear-monger about the effects of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate-or-test policy, after he could not support his trumped-up hypothesis that it was actually making Americans less safe because some police officers and some U.S. service members may be threatening to quit, which he claimed could cause a spike in “terror, murder, robberies, kidnappings.”
After getting a fact-based push back from Psaki, Doocy resorted to more fear-mongering, insisting there are other issues more important than COVID for the White House to focus on, including ” international terror gang violence, murder, arson, and drug dealing.”
“If the whole point of a vaccine mandate is to make people safer. But the vaccine mandate also means tons of police and military, they walk off the job. Then at the end of the day, does a vaccine mandate, make people safer?” Doocy asked in a disjointed question.
“Well, where are tons of police and military walking off the job?” Psaki asked.
He claimed that one source “says that hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated, which is leading to questions about possible military readiness,” Doocy claimed.
“The L.A. County Sheriff says that five to 10% of their workforce could walk off the job,” he added, which is inaccurate. The L.A. County Sheriff said, “I don’t want to be in a position to lose 5%, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate,” numbers which he did not say were actually the quantity who would refuse to work in announcing his personal decision to refuse to enforce the mandate. The mandate also includes the option for regular testing instead of getting vaccinated.
Psaki encouraged Doocy to look at “a range” of companies and organizations, and “frankly, the Department of Defense” which she said has “up to date statistics on members of the military” who are “over 90%” vaccinated.
Flustered and frustrated Doocy tried to continue to challenge Psaki.
“But there are other problems in the world than COVID-19: international terror, gang violence, murder, arson, drug dealing –” Doocy fear-mongered, as if they would become worse because of the vaccine mandate, or as if the Biden administration were spending all its resources on enforcing the vaccine or test mandate, which is false.
“What was the number one cause of death among police officers last year do you know?” Psaki asked Doocy.
He did not respond.
“COVID-19,” she said, answering her own question because he refused to. “So that’s something that we’re working to address and police departments are working to address. If you look at Seattle, as an example which I know has been in the some of the reporting, 92% of the police forces are vaccinated as are 93% of firefighters, 99% of Seattle’s 11,000 employees have submitted vaccine verification or an exemption request.”
Unmoved, Doocy again resorted to trying to design the administration’s agenda.
“All these other problems: terror, murder, robberies, kidnappings, is there any concern that if police forces shrink, or if the size of the ready, military force shrinks, that the United States or localities may not be equipped properly to deal with [them]?”
Psaki’ at the end of her very long line of patience, put an end to the Fox News correspondent’s fear-mongering.
“Peter. More than 700,000 people have died of COVID, again it was the number one cause of death among police departments and police officers, it’s something that we should take seriously. Departments are trying to save people in their departments, people who work for them. We support that effort and there’s been success across the country in that regard.”
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