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Oct. 18, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
29:19
Defending Religious Freedom - October 18th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, news roundup, information overload hour, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
We've talked a lot about the number of people now that have decided that it's not a matter of really debating any longer.
Okay, vaccination, non-vaccination.
I think, and there might be a few persuadable people out there at this time, but most people seem pretty locked into their positions.
I've stated my position to take it seriously, to research, to take into account your medical history, current condition, talk to your doctor, doctors, and then you're going to have to make up your own decision.
Now, with that said, we're told we might lose half of the police department in Chicago.
We're going to lose thousands and thousands of military personnel because they don't want to go along with the mandate.
Again, I'm not discussing whether or not it's the right or wrong decision to get the vaccine or not.
We've discussed that ad nauseum here.
The question is, these people have decided, teachers, military personnel, police, nurses.
This drives me crazy.
Nurses and frontline medical care workers, the very ones that risk their lives every single day in the middle of the worst of COVID, many of whom got COVID themselves and have natural immunity and were diving on COVID grenades and their work environment was a COVID petri dish.
And they're now leaving.
San Francisco has put nearly 200 unvaccinated first responders on leave.
Wildcrime is surging in the city.
Nearly 40% of California state workers are unvaccinated despite Newsom's order.
What are we going to do when the military starts quitting en masse?
And then they're talking about, well, we're going to do this in a way that they just don't seem to care.
I don't think they realize the impact, especially with if you think things are bad with the supply chain now, they're only going to get worse.
It's going to be an unmitigated disaster.
By the way, if you want to know where vaccine hesitancy comes from, yeah, the Bidens were caught violating their own D.C. mask mandate at a posh Georgetown restaurant.
What a shocker there.
Just like Gavin Newsom, just like Nancy Pelosi, just like pretty much every liberal Democrat, the governor of New Jersey.
I mean, it's amazing how hypocritical people are.
You know, Fauci, people against me are against me when truth becomes inconvenient.
Oh, okay.
You've been so accurate on every aspect of this, Dr. Fauci.
So forthcoming about the origins of the coronavirus.
So forthcoming about what you knew about gain of function.
Anyway, NBC even fact-checked his fear that college football games would be COVID super spreaders.
That never happened.
The only super spreader is Biden's border disaster with a high rate of COVID positivity.
A Washington trooper signs out for the last time, tells Governor Inslee he can kiss my ass.
And it's, you watch, this is now, this is now a movement.
And what impact this is going to have on the economy?
I don't know.
Chicago police's vaccine mandate, you know, threatens discipline firing for non-compliance.
But yet, you know, day after day, the bar keeps shifting and things keep moving.
Nobody wants to even discuss or debate natural immunity.
Well, why wouldn't they at least want to look at the science of this?
Seems like the next push is going to be five to 11-year-olds getting fully vaccinated.
I don't know.
I've yet to, Linda, we should look at the science.
I've not seen that this has been the biggest problem, five to 11-year-olds getting COVID-19.
I have yet to hear.
Now, have young children gotten it?
Yeah, matter of fact, I know people whose kids have gotten it, and their symptoms were like zero in almost every case that I heard of.
Again, anecdotally only.
So what is the fallout if all these people follow through that are saying that they've made up their mind.
They're not doing it.
All the teachers, all the drivers, all the police, all the military, all the nurses, in some cases, doctors.
What's the result of all of this?
Anyway, here's Fauci saying, because we're in a pandemic, I'm comfortable with telling people what to do.
I'm not comfortable listening to you because you're wrong 90% of the time.
Listen.
When we're talking about essential workers maybe going off the job like half of a police force, should local officials or should corporate executives back off enforcing these mandates?
Well, Chris, I mean, I'm not comfortable with telling people what they should do under normal circumstances, but we are not in normal circumstances right now.
Take the police.
We know now the statistics.
More police officers die of COVID than they do in other causes of death.
So it doesn't make any sense to not try to protect yourself as well as the colleagues that you work with.
I don't know if you saw the, it's kind of gone viral, this video of ESPN, an ESPN reporter, Allison Williams, she decided rather than go along with the mandate that she's leaving her job.
And she says, I am so morally and ethically not aligned with this.
On the legal side of this, where is this headed?
I think it's going to be all over the place.
I think you're going to see a rush of lawsuits, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time.
Daniel Sur, managing attorney, Liberty Justice Center, has filed a new case on behalf of six nurses in Illinois asking for a religious exemption because they were denied.
Riverside Health denies religious exemptions for COVID vaccinations.
One nurse has already been fired.
The others face termination on October the 31st.
That's not very long from now.
Counselor, welcome to the program.
Daniel, how are you?
Thanks for having me on, Sean.
It's great to be here.
All right.
So now, for whatever reason, they've made that decision, right?
I mean, is there any convincing them of taking the vaccine or they've made up their mind?
No, if you ask these nurses, every single one of them would say, I will quit my job rather than compromise my beliefs.
That's how strongly they feel about this.
This is where I now see it as well.
It's sort of like there's no point talking about abortion anymore with most people because most people have made up their minds and they even will give you very specific answers about why they're either pro-life or pro-choice, but only pro-choice up until the first trimester and that's it, why they're against late-term abortion.
Most people will give you an answer.
But if you have a discussion with people, it's usually not going to end with, oh, you just changed my mind, right?
Yeah, these nurses, these are deeply held beliefs.
They are sincere beliefs.
They all are committed to their faith, and their employer should not be forcing them to choose between continuing their faith commitments and continuing in their job.
That's just wrong.
And it's illegal on top of it.
So we got a glimpse into how the courts can go either way on this.
With, for example, the New York court, I was rather surprised by the decision supporting religious exemptions.
But then you have other situations.
Other courts are making decisions that don't support any exemptions at all.
By the way, the whole idea of one-size-fits-all medicine scares me anyway because there are people with rare conditions that couldn't get the vaccine if they wanted to, or at least not with the doctor's recommendation.
But people have, you know, the people that I speak to, that I've talked to, you know, they usually have pretty informed answers as to why they don't want to get the vaccine.
That's right, Sean.
These nurses are thoughtful.
They are passionate about their patients.
They've been on the front lines of this pandemic every day, day in and day out, for the past 20 months.
And they just, they know, in this particular case, they know the science of how babies are formed, and they believe as they do with their faith about the dignity of the unborn child.
And so they have a religious objection to these vaccines.
But what's important is the law protects them just like that.
In their case, you're talking about fetal tissue.
Is the crux of their argument based more on the use of fetal tissue research as part of the manufacturing of these vaccines?
That's right, Sean.
For them, they are deeply pro-life.
That pro-life commitment comes from their faith and their religious background.
And the law protects their faith, just like the law protects other people in their faith.
That's what's so important about this principle of conscience.
It protects all of us in our right to believe whatever it is we believe and prevent a government or an employer from coming in and coercing us to compromise these most deeply held values.
Are they given an option, meaning would they have the option of every day going into work, getting tested before they were allowed to work that day?
Is that option available for your clients?
No, Sean, the hospital here has issued a blanket denial of every exemption request for anyone who comes near patients.
They've given no alternative.
They've given no accommodation.
Their attitude is we don't care what you've done the last 20 months.
Hit the road if you're not willing to get on board with this mandate.
And my clients, they are staying strong on their beliefs.
They are fighting back in court because they're not going to compromise on their faith, and they shouldn't have to lose their job because of it.
You know, it's particularly offensive to me, especially nurses and frontline health care workers, because, you know, in the early days of COVID, when we knew less than we knew now, I mean, they were walking into a Petri dish every day and diving on COVID grenades every day, and many of them ended up getting COVID as a result.
So I find it pretty offensive that the way to say thank you for them risking their lives to save other people's lives is either do what we say or we're going to fire you, one size fits all medicine.
Why wouldn't they give them the option of getting tested every day?
You'd think that common sense would prevail here, Sean, but unfortunately, you know, common sense is just not what characterizes so much of our society.
What you hear on your program every day.
You know, in this particular instance, these nurses have been on the front lines, as you say, and all they're asking is that their employer respect their right to hold their beliefs and they're willing to realize an accommodation to continue to protect patients, but they just want to live out their faith.
And part of that faith is their passion, their vocation, their calling to be nurses.
You know, it really is mind-numbing.
Let's talk about how you see this unfolding legally, because it's not just your challenge and the religious exemption challenge, but there are other people with a whole variety of reasons that have made similar decisions.
And for whatever reason, nobody's been able to convince them to get the vaccine.
So they've made their decision, and they're adults.
So we kind of have had that debate, and they've made up their minds.
Now what's going to happen legally?
You're going to see, what, a flurry of lawsuits, probably class action by the time this is all said and done.
You think the Supreme Court ultimately takes this on?
I think one case that's absolutely ahead of the Supreme Court is this illegal mandate from OSHA and the Biden administration.
There is no doubt in my mind, Sean, that this all-employer mandate...
Explain why legally.
Yeah, so OSHA, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, their job is to make sure when you're at work, your workplace has in place safe practices to protect you from toxic chemicals, something like that.
This is a society-wide disease.
And what they are trying to do is go beyond what the law empowers OSHA to do and regulate a social problem through any lever they can.
And I think the Supreme Court is going to say public health is a state function.
In our democracy, we have states and the federal government.
They have different jobs protecting public health generally.
The reason we've seen it be governors and not the president doing a lot of the regulating the last year is because public health is committed to the states and it is not the job of the federal government.
And when they do this kind of stuff through administrative rule, it is massive overreach.
And the Supreme Court's going to shoot it down just like they did when they tried to regulate the entire housing market through the eviction moratorium.
Unbelievable.
Well, we wish you a lot of luck.
Daniel, keep us up to speed in your case.
Let's see what happens with these nurses.
And we may end up with a Supreme Court case just on this aspect alone.
We'll see over time.
Thanks for being with us.
Sean, thanks for caring about our clients.
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Hi, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, Andrew is in Minnesota, a liberal that doesn't like me, apparently.
What's up, Andrew?
How are you?
I'm doing well.
How about yourself?
I'm good.
I'm glad you called.
And I don't care if you like me or not.
I don't give a rat's.
You know what?
Go ahead.
Sure.
Well, I'm not here to pick any bones with you personally.
I just want to say, so like I've been hearing the argument lately in opposition to the vaccine mandates that it should be a decision between a person and their doctor, which I don't know anybody that's disagreeing with that.
And there is this false equivalency that's being drawn between the my body, my choice argument and this here.
And so the inconsistency that I see is in one regard, you say that this decision should be between somebody and their doctor, but in the other regard, completely reject the idea that that should be a decision between a person and their doctor.
To me, that seems like a blatant inconsistency.
And I was hoping.
No, I'm saying the inconsistency is just the opposite.
You have an ass backwards.
And that is where are the people that say my body, my choice, right?
And versus where are those same people when it comes to the vaccine mandate?
Now, do you agree with one size fits all medicine?
Has any of your research shown you that there are rare conditions where doctors would recommend their patients not get the vaccine?
Have you read any of that?
No, sir, but I also haven't heard any of that.
Well, hang on, but I have.
But I have, and I've interviewed people that have these rare conditions.
That's number one.
Number two, my question is, you know, you support the mandate.
Why not give people the option if they wanted to get tested every day as they go into work for whatever reason they have a different point of view than you?
Is that currently not, is that currently not what the federal law says should be done?
No, there's a lot of hospitals that are demanding that you either get the vaccine or you're being fired.
Same with police departments and the same with the military.
Get it or get fired.
There's no other option.
Sure.
In every single one of those examples, you have, well, I mean, not with the military, right?
Because that's a federal organization.
You have state laws and federal laws that dictate what the police do, but it's specifically with the hospitals.
Like this is an organization that is responsible for the betterment of society and the health of its population.
Excuse me, the people that you're talking about are the people that in the worst moments of COVID, unlike you and me, walked into a Petri dish of COVID every day and dove on one COVID grenade after another.
Many of them got COVID as a result.
Many believe in the science of natural immunity.
Whether you agree with them or not is not the question.
Now we're going to fire those people and not give them the option of being tested so they can be safe for their fellow employees.
That doesn't seem right to me.
Sure.
Well, you're putting words in my mouth there.
So you don't support mass firing of people if they choose not to get the vaccine.
It's a yes or no.
You either support a vaccine mandate with no other options or you don't.
What do you or not?
It depends.
If it's from the federal government, then I'm going to.
Okay.
No, no.
No distinction.
If nurses decide they don't want the vaccine for whatever reason, whether you strongly disagree or not, that's not the question.
This is their decision.
Their body, their choice, right?
If they decide no, should they be given the option of at least being tested once a day?
I don't know that if I have a problem with that, but whenever it comes to I don't know if I have a problem.
But you don't have a problem.
You don't seem to care too much that the very people that dove on COVID grenades in the middle of this Adam Schiff show that save and did it to save the lives of other people that they don't even know, they don't get any credit for that whatsoever in your mind.
They get credit in my mind.
I'm grateful to them.
There's nothing that I have said that goes along with what you're saying right now, for example.
Like I've got all kinds of things.
No, you're not.
You don't seem passionate at all.
The people that were on the front lines, many that have natural immunity, have made it for whatever reason made their choice.
They're now going to get fired.
don't seem to give a rip I mean her private companies have private companies public hospitals private hospitals I'm not It doesn't matter.
Should these nurses be fired?
I think not.
Okay.
I think that reasonable accounts.
So it's taking me 10 minutes to get out of you that you agree that they shouldn't be fired.
Okay.
So just because, like, it's obvious that I have some ignorance in this regard.
So, like, are what are there?
Don't worry.
That's usually the case with liberals.
But we make what we make exceptions for that.
Yeah, well, I mean, I appreciate you having me on here, man.
So like they are saying that you have to get vaccinated or you have to get fired.
There is no room for anyway in between, specifically with general.
And a lot of industry, including some police departments, some hospitals, and the military, that is correct.
Well, I don't know.
You're not going to get a strong position on me on that.
What about people that have deeply held religious views?
Would you support religious exemptions?
I'm sure as a liberal, you support conscientious objectors, right?
I mean, yeah, I do.
So it's difficult for me to do.
So what's the difference here?
Well, what's defined as a legitimate religious exemption?
Religious faith does not allow for me to take the vaccine that has fetal research, fetal tissue research involved in it.
So, have the leaders of all the world's organized religions, like major organizations?
It doesn't matter whether we don't need to ask that.
We have people that are seeking a religious exemption for deeply held religious views.
Do you support their religious exemption argument?
I find it highly suspect that in most cases.
Highly suspect?
Who are you to question their religion?
I'm not questioning your faith.
I would assume that if you have a particular faith, it's a deeply held view of yours.
Who am I to question your deeply held view?
Where were all these very strongly held religious convictions whenever all their children?
Whenever their children are vaccinated to go to school, we are all vaccinated as a society and have been for decades now.
And I don't remember this being a big argument.
Not on the issue of fetal tissue.
There's been a lot of people have taken this stand over the years.
Seems like it's pretty loud right now and it's awfully convenient, don't you think?
I think it, but no, because it's been, I follow news every day.
This has come up quite often, as a matter of fact.
You know, the bottom line is this.
You know, you don't know.
I'm not telling people.
I'm telling people something that is fairly unique, apparently, because there's a lot of people playing doctor on radio and TV.
I refuse to do it.
There's a lot of people in the punditry world that are playing doctor.
A lot of people in Washington that are playing doctor.
The one thing they all have in common is none of them have ever been to a medical school, never have served an internship or a residency.
They've not been on the front lines.
They've never done any medical research.
But with, you know, one size fits all medicine, you must get the shot.
Okay, that's their view.
I don't feel comfortable.
I'll tell you why.
Andrew, you're from Minnesota.
Do I know one single thing about your medical history?
Do I?
No, you don't.
Do I know a single thing about your current medical condition?
No, you don't.
Okay.
Now, am I wrong to say to everybody in this audience, please, I've seen the worst of this.
You got to take this sucker seriously.
We've lost 700 and almost, what, 30 million, 730,000 Americans?
Take it seriously.
Do your own research.
And I'm not talking about breaking down the sequence or the genome of the coronavirus.
Research what an, do you know what an mRNA vaccine is?
Do you know what it's about?
Yep.
What is it?
You don't know, do you?
You don't know.
Just admit it, Andrew.
It's okay.
Andrew?
Andrew?
Hello?
Is it something I said, Linda?
I don't know.
Maybe something.
I think he got called out for being ignorant.
You know what the problem is, though?
It was such a good conversation because he actually said, I'm ignorant on this topic or I don't know this.
I agree with you.
But it's not a bad conversation.
I wasn't being mean to him.
No, no, it was a good conversation.
But the problem is, is that the second that it was something like about religion, it's like, you know, no, MMR, you know, rubella, measles, mumps, these things, like they weren't tested on fetal tissue.
We know that COVID-19 vaccines were tested on fetal tissue.
We have that information.
Here's my next question, though.
And this is why I'm asking people to take it seriously and do their own research.
That's the next thing I say.
And I mean research.
I mean read because most people don't know what a monoclonal antibody is.
And it is shown, to me, it's shown the most promise.
And if whether you, now that we have breakthrough cases and then you have the unvaccinated cases, I don't want anyone in this audience not knowing what plan B is.
Plan B is you got the vaccination, you got the booster even, and now you get a breakthrough case.
What are your options then?
Most people.
But Sean, can I say something?
And I feel real, as you know, I feel very passionate about this, and I keep my personal opinions on this to myself to some degree because people's medical.
Oh, thank God if they heard it.
Very funny.
But in all seriousness, you know, I just can't imagine saying to somebody, you know, as a nation, we want you to be healthy.
We want you to be, you know, in a good place.
We want to be able to have a long and healthy life.
We live in the greatest country in the world.
We're so grateful for it.
But by the way, we're going to ration medicines that don't need to be rationed.
We're going to shut down ports that don't need to be shut down.
We're going to put masks on kids who aren't as susceptible to this virus.
None of the data supports it.
We now know that the PCR tests don't work.
There's all of this data.
And I just feel like the science and I wouldn't stay with that last statement.
PCR tests, you know, generally work.
There are examples of false positives.
It's not a perfect.
But the point that I'm making is that the CDC has said that the amount of false positives and misinformation and data collection they've gotten from them have now made them decide as of the summer of 2021 that they will discontinue the use as of December 2021 and begin using something else in January.
Maybe the ABBA test.
I don't know.
But the bottom line is we're still adhering to the results of a test that we now give faulty positives.
So what I'm trying to understand is when is the science convenient to us?
When do we start to make decisions?
I'm going to take it from a different vantage point.
And that is they've only used the science that is convenient for them.
100%.
That's why, you know, for Joe Biden only one time mentioned monoclonal antibodies when we're in the middle of a massive new variant where people that are fully vaccinated, just like the government asked them to do, are getting infected with COVID.
What's the next option?
Right.
Now, granted, Delta didn't result in as many hospitalizations and deaths.
That data is in two.
But what about the next variant where maybe it does?
I mean, these viruses often take on new qualities and the original vaccination is for the original variant, if you will.
That's right.
The original virus.
That virus now evolves into something completely, not completely different.
I mean, a lot of the sequencing remains the same, but it is a different virus.
But the point, Sean, is, I mean, you love medicine.
You are obsessed with this stuff.
I am not.
I have gotten obsessed with it just because of the fact that I feel that the government overreach has a lot more to do with politics than it has to do with keeping me healthy.
Because if the government really cared about keeping me healthy, they would say, well, let's use whatever works for the patient, which could be any number of different drugs or any mixture of drugs.
And that would be the conversation between you and your physician.
Unfortunately, that's not happening because of all of the various people that are in place at different pharmaceutical companies, their relationships with the government, what they think everybody should do.
But it's not one size fits all, as you say all the time.
And in personal situations, you know, I had a friend that I talked to this weekend.
She has a neurological disorder.
She can't take the vaccine.
She has a medical exemption.
Here's the interesting part.
She works the last 15 years of her life in telemed.
She is a telemed nurse, only works long before COVID on computers on phones.
And they're telling her they're going to fire her unless she gets the vaccine.
Why?
She doesn't see patients.
She talks to them on the phone or via computer.
These are the things that don't make sense to me.
There's a lot of, but there's too many examples.
You know, look, I particularly feel strongly, again, I'm putting aside the vaccine, not vacc debate.
For whatever reason, for whatever reason, people have made up their mind.
People in the military, police officers, nurses, nurses, and the military in particular to me.
I find it grossly repulsive and offensive that the people that dove on COVID grenades, most of whom actually ended up getting it, most of the people that I know that worked in any hospital setting in New York during the middle of this, in the beginning of this, when we knew less about this, with almost without exception, they got it.
They did it.
They took the risk to save lives.
And the way we thank them is firing them.
I'm sorry.
I find that an unacceptable option.
And there ought to be accommodations.
If you want to test them every day, go ahead.
Shove the stupid swab up their nose, run it around each nostril three times, wait the 10 or 15 minutes and get the results.
And if they're negative, let them go to work and let them feed their family and let them keep their pension.
And let them see their children and don't take their children away from them.
Yeah, and I listen, you know, the carpet or the horse.
Where is the science showing that we need to vaccinate five to 11-year-olds?
I want to see it.
I have yet to see that science.
Agreed.
I'd like to see it.
It's only follow the source science, but they only say follow the science when it's convenient to follow the science.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
As we kick off a new week here, loaded up tonight.
Hannity, 9 Eastern, Fox News, Eric Trump, Kaylee McInaney, Leo 2.0, Terrell, Newt Gingrich, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Greg Jarrett, Lindsey Graham.
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All happening tonight at 9.
Set your DVR.
We'll see you tonight.
Back here tomorrow.
As always, thanks for being with us.
You make this show possible.
We will never forget it.
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