GOP governor schooled by Bill de Blasio over need for Covid mandates during CNN confrontation
On Sunday morning, as a change of pace, "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper allowed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) to debate the need for Covid mandates that led to the New York Democrat knocking aside the Republican's complaints that they are politically divisive.
With Tapper sitting back and letting the two go at it, Hutchinson -- who received condolences from de Blasio over the devastation to his state from Saturday's tornadoes -- made his case.
"First of all, put it in historical perspective, never in the history of our country has government mandated the private sector to require vaccinations," the Republican began. "It's generally been left up to the states and localities, but it has been looked at as an education effort in our school systems. To put this onto the businesses does a number of things. One: it hardens resistance, that's what we see in Arkansas, but I think across the country. Secondly, the courts have struck it down, by and large, the president's mandate these mandates are unconstitutional overreaches and the courts are looking at it in that fashion."
"It's a little bit closer case when it comes to a city, because that's a government closest to the people," he continued. "But if you're looking at 1 million employees and you get a 90% vaccination rate you have 10% which is 100,000 workers and whenever the businesses are struggling with workers, our service providers, they're providing for their family, you don't need to add 100,000 to the unemployed list and that would hurt us in trying to do our recovery, provide the services we need already struggling even in the health care industry. If you put that mandate in, you're going to lose some health care workers as well. So that's the reasons, part of the reasons that we oppose those mandates."
Given a chance to respond, de Blasio lectured, "To the question here, governor, look, right now here's what I fear. Omicron is here, it's all over the country. This variant moves fast. and we have to move faster, and I'll tell you what I hear from our business community that their greatest fear is shutdowns. Their greatest fear is going back to where we were in 2020 to restrictions, to people losing their livelihood."
"You mentioned unemployment," he continued. "The greatest threat to employment right now is that the Omicron variant and the cold winter months are going to supercharge Covid and take us backwards. So i'm going to argue to you that mandates work and it's time. Since I put mandates in place in New York City, starting in August, we've seen over 1 million more doses. 71% of our people are fully vaccinated. A lot of those people made the decision because the mandate was there, and it was the thing that moved them, and it's keeping people alive."
"So I do agree with you, we have to take all of the factors into account, but we've proven that mandates work, and now we're up against a new enemy with this new variant. we've got to have a strategy to fight back," he added.
Watch below.
Part I:
Part 2:
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