Late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel backed vaccine passports on his show Tuesday night and contradicted his own argument against Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on voter identification laws. Kimmel said DeSantis and the GOP should support vaccine passports because of election security measures, producing a false equivalency.
“Unfortunately, many Republicans aren’t on board with [vaccine passports], including Ron DeSantis, the terrible governor of Florida,” Kimmel said, proceeding to play a clip of the governor in his Monday press conference vowing to ban vaccine passports in Florida.
“You want to go to a movie theatre, should you have to show that? No. You want to go to a game? No. You want to go to a theme park? No. So, we’re not supportive of [vaccine passports],” DeSantis said in the clip played by Kimmel.
“Right, which is very rich coming from the party that wants nine forms of identification before you can vote,” Kimmel said, to which there was applause in the crowd.
Kimmel’s argument flips one of the many reasons conservatives argue against vaccine passports. Kimmel claimed that if Republicans support voter ID laws, then they should support vaccine passports.
But in fact, one of the chief contradictions those on the Right point out with vaccine passports — which The Washington Post reports the Biden administration is backing for people to prove their vaccination status — is the fact Democrats are actively opposing voter ID laws (in support of H.R. 1), but now advocating for a coronavirus ID.
Democrats oppose the new Georgia election bill signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on the grounds that it requires voter ID for absentee ballots. The left deems this measure racist, while simultaneously pushing for vaccine passports, which would effectively ban anyone who has not been vaccinated from frequenting venues or traveling.
It’s worth pointing out Biden’s administration is having to address vaccine hesitation, notably among Black and Latino Americans. So by Kimmel’s logic, documentation to prove COVID-19 vaccinations is not racist, but the ID requirements to cast a legal ballot in an election are.
Kimmel employs hyperbole to say it is supposedly contradictory that DeSantis opposes vaccine passports, claiming he “wants nine forms of identification before you can vote.” This is false. In reality, you only need one form of identification to vote, with several states not even requiring a photo ID and accepting things like bank statements, or something with your name and address.
On the contrary, GOP members are now fighting against a radical Democratic Party seeking to eliminate voter ID altogether — and thus seeking to protect just one form of ID.
“Ron DeSantis isn’t the only dope who opposes the passport,” Kimmel said, before playing a clip of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene saying vaccine passports are “Biden’s mark of the beast.”
“None other than Klan Mom herself Marjorie Taylor Greene believes there are biblical implications,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel contradicted himself once more, saying, “Poor Joe Biden. How can you reach across the aisle when the other side thinks you have hooves?”
For starters, there has been no attempt by Biden to “reach across the aisle,” since he has governed from the far-left side of the aisle and is on pace to have signed the most executive orders by any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to The American Presidency Project.
Biden has also continued to call Republicans racist, claiming the GOP’s efforts to oppose H.R. 1 is “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” alluding to segregation laws which southern Democrats favored at a greater rate than Republicans. Taylor Greene, along with a lot of other Americans, is skeptical of an unprecedented attempt to digitize and categorize the confidential data of millions of Americans.
Kimmel acknowledges that “we now have controversies where we never had them before,” and in the process dunks on himself. While he attempts to make the argument that the GOP makes a big fuss over everything the Democrats aim to legislate, his reliance on vaccine passports as something completely new to American culture further validates DeSantis and Greene’s points.
Since vaccine passports are unchartered water, and precisely something “we never [have] had,” the talk show host is unintentionally spot-on. Americans are not insane for being skeptical of a potential program that would require them to inject something in their bodies in order to participate in civic life.
Keep doing your thing though, Jimmy. The more you try to make arguments, the more you demonstrate the insanity of the modern-day left.
Source: The Federalist
