“[Biden] is basically yelling at you, condemning you, lecturing you,” Fox News host Mark Levin told Sunday viewers in reference to Biden’s speech last week, when the president told the American public his patience was “wearing thin” for approximately 80 million unvaccinated people.
Biden was expected to deliver a “six-pronged plan” to address the virus but, by the time the 20-minute speech was over, many Americans had learned private businesses were being forced to force their employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine or face federal fines from OSHA, the federal agency created in the 1970s to ensure workplace safety.
In the same speech, the U.S. president also suggested some state governors are blocking the country from overcoming the pandemic and he vowed he had a solution: run them over like roadkill.
“I’ll use my powers,” Biden promised, “to get them out of the way.”
Hours after that speech, White House official Cedric Richardson told CNN the Biden administration is trying to “save lives” including children who are too young to get vaccinated.
“And so we have to do everything we can to make sure adults do it,” Richardson said of mandatory vaccines. “And those governors that stand in the way, I think it was very clear from the president’s tone today that he will run over them.”
Many state governors, however, are not planning to lie down and get run over, American Family News also reported last week.
"The President has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business," Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, responded in a Twitter post.
Mississippi is known as the poorest and unhealthiest state in the Union, and it also has the country’s lowest vaccine rate in a state where the Republican governor has urged citizens to take the jab.
"The vaccine itself is life-saving but this unconstitutional move is terrifying,” Reeves (pictured at left) stated. “This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants."
The first-term governor expounded that one-word description in a radio interview on Mississippi-based American Family Radio. Reeves said the public should be concerned far beyond ongoing debates over vaccines and politics.
"If the President of the United States has this power," Reeves asked rhetorically, "what power does one man that holds the presidency not have?"
Other governors who have vowed to fight back represent the states of Florida, Texas, Iowa, Georgia, Tennessee, South Dakota, Montana, Arkansas, and Arizona.
All of those states are GOP-led "red" states and so far no Democrat governor from a "blue" state has publicly suggested Biden stepped beyond the legal bounds of a U.S. president.
In a message also posted to Twitter, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said the president of the United States does not have the legal authority to force businesses to vaccinate their employees.
“And I am saying to all of my constituents, to the governor of Texas,” Roy said, “do not follow this executive order. Do not fear the power of the federal government.”
