Joe Rogan Experience/YouTube Joe Rogan and Dave Smith talk about COVID-19 vaccine passports.
Joe Rogan said one of the reasons he invited comedian Dave Smith onto the Joe Rogan Experience was to talk about COVID-19 vaccine passports. Rogan told Smith during the April 24 episode of the JRE podcast, “I share your deep concern about this idea. Because this is not something they’re just going to keep with COVID vaccines.
Rogan added, “If there’s a way that they can get you to show your papers and to show whether you have an app on your phone or whatever it is that you have in order to freely travel around the United States, they’re going to keep that f****** thing.”
Smith, a New York-based stand-up comic and self-described libertarian who hosts the Part of the Problem and The Legion of Skanks podcasts and who is often seen on The Greg Gutfield Show on Fox News and Kennedy on Fox Business Network, told Rogan, “I think objectively, the country went totalitarian for about a year. Not every single part of it was as totalitarian as the rest. But according to governors, out of their own words, they suspended the bill of rights. We’ve been in a year under that. How long do you think we can go living in a totalitarian society before that’s just what our society is and there’s not really a memory of the old normal or that at least seems like the old times and that’s just not who we are anymore. We’re already dangerously close to that position.”
.@PressSec Jen Psaki on possibility of the federal government supporting vaccine passports: “The government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential.”
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According to The Hill, the Biden administration has said there is no federal plan for COVID-19 vaccine passports. And there have been no bills or orders put on the table in any state for a mandated vaccine passport. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at an April 6 briefing, “The government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential. There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential. Our interest is very simple from the federal government, which is American’s privacy and rights should be protected so that these systems are not used against people unfairly.” The White House said private businesses would decide if a person would have to provide proof of a vaccine.
But some Republican governors, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Joe Rogan’s new home state, have already taken action. Abbott passed an executive order banning state government and some private entities from requiring vaccine passports, according to The Associated Press. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed a similar order, The AP reported. Abbott said in a statement, “We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health — and we will do so without treading on Texans’ personal freedoms.”
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Smith Said It ‘Makes My Blood Boil’ When ‘Basic Freedoms’ Are Used as Negotiation Points
Smith told Rogan, “I’ll tell you what I can’t stand. Which just makes my blood boil. Is when they use your basic freedoms as a negotiating tool. When they’re like, ‘Well if you do X, Y and Z, maybe we’ll let you have restaurants. Maybe we’ll let you have this.’ Like, who the f*** are you? Now you’re using my freedom as a carrot on a stick. What type of sick s*** is that?”
Smith added during the vaccine passport conversation, “Now we have this opportunity where it’s like, hey, Joe Biden says everyone who wants to take the vaccine will be able to take it by June. He said. And that’s a perfect little opportunity point to go, ‘OK so we break out of it now. Now we break out of it. Now you can make a sound argument that if the vaccine is available for everybody, the people who want it, can take it and the people who don’t are choosing to take the risk. And now we go back to normal life.”
Smith continued, “And at the same time, they’re proposing this vaccine passport. Which really, if you look at the proposals, isn’t a passport, it’s an app, with your medical history, your data can be tracked, your location can be traced. All of these things”
Smith Says ‘We Have This Fork in the Road’ & Said a Vaccine Passport Would Create a ‘National Caste System’
Smith told Rogan, “But we have this fork in the road. We could go back to being a free country. Not as free as some of us would like, but at least the way we used to have it. Or, we could go to what is being proposed and talked about, which is a national caste system, where there is one group of people that have basic freedoms and rights and one group of people who do not. They don’t have the freedom to travel, they don’t have the freedom to go to events, maybe not to work. Ideas have been floated out about grocery stores, that’s a national caste system.”
He added, “And also just throwing away the idea that you have any type of medical privacy from the government. It’s being done in collusion between big businesses and governments.”
Smith said, “I don’t mean to be hyperbolic but I think this whole thing is f*****. I really think this whole country, we’re not going to come out of this. … You think they’re going to take that power and then this will only ever be used for the COVID vaccine? Why would it be?”
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