Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison, a former Health and Human Services chief of staff during the Trump administration, said Friday he's proud to see his neighbors in Oklahoma fighting back, through a lawsuit, against the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for members of the National Guard.
"I think states across the country need to do as much of this as possible," the Texas Republican said on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now." "What we're learning here is that when things get tough, either with individuals' lives or as a nation, you know people's true colors come out."
And when it comes to the Biden administration, "at their core, these people are totalitarians," said Harrison. "They're authoritarians. They do not believe in personal responsibility. They do not believe that individual Oklahomans, Texans, Americans can make up their own healthcare decisions for themselves."
Harrison was part of the Trump administration when Operation Warp Speed was getting underway to fight back against the COVID pandemic, and he said Friday that it was "foundational" that the vaccines be voluntary, not mandated.
"We wanted to have vaccines as soon as possible into as many Americans who wanted them, but those who wanted them by choice," said Harrison. "The Biden administration, which does not believe in liberty and freedom, is coming out with mandate after mandate, one out of the Department of Labor, one out of the Department of Health and Human Services, one for federal government contractors."
The courts are also agreeing that the mandates are unconstitutional, and telling President Joe Biden that "we are not a dictatorship," said Harrison.
"We have a constitution," he said. "What [they] are doing is flatly illegal. It's unconstitutional and I would go further and say it's unnecessary. We've got over 80-82% of adult Americans who have already had some of the vaccination. You add to that those who are naturally immune and we probably have around 92-93% of Americans with some type of immunity to COVID."
Further, there has been "incredible hypocrisy" with Biden, including with how he's handled his travel ban from Africa after criticizing Trump over the ban from China, said Harrison.
He also called the reaction to the omicron variant an "overreaction and one that is absolutely unnecessary."
"We've got the doctor who publicized this variant to the world, at the epicenter of it, saying, hey, this is not that big of a deal," said Harrison. "The idea that we're going to panic, overreact, start shutting down economies, and enacting travel bans, mask mandates, possible quarantines every time the virus mutates slightly is a massive overreaction. I think it just goes to the heart of the issue that at the end of the day they will do anything they can to seize on any bit of panic to maximize the control of the federal government over the American people, and we need to stand up."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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