Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joins Lou Dobbs on the Great America Show to talk about her efforts to force the Defense Department to drop a ban on the use of a controversial anti-vaccine drug called Ciprofloxacin.
00:04:19.640And the White House, obviously, very resistant to this, still insisting that there should be a mandate,
00:04:28.720irrespective of whether the president signs or does not sign the NDAA.
00:04:35.460How do you think that's going to ultimately play out with the White House?
00:04:38.480I think the president is going to end up signing it because it's not telling DOD that they cannot exercise vaccine mandates.
00:04:47.840This is very, very specific to that one shot.
00:04:52.980And it protects our men and women in uniform.
00:04:55.380And hopefully will get us back on the path to closing the gap that exists between the goals and the required numbers for military and strength and where we are right now.
00:05:07.980Speaking of military strength, the numbers vary.
00:05:13.340I have seen it seems to me you would know, obviously, far better than me.
00:05:18.180But it seems to me the Pentagon is playing with numbers here because we've looked at their recruiting goals that look at various points to be as much as 40 percent off.
00:05:28.060We know further that they are losing senior, talented, experienced soldiers, as well as airmen and sailors and so forth.
00:05:41.180So we're seeing sort of a double whammy here.
00:05:44.640Add to that the 60,000 people who would have left the service over the vaccine mandate.
00:05:52.220It's it's really it's troubling to think of the command, the general staff in that Pentagon is so stupid that you had to sort of hold their nose to the reality of the recruiting numbers and the size of the of the of the force.
00:06:11.120Yeah. And, you know, Lou, I think that is what helped me to get bipartisan support in the House and the Senate is I said, look at this.
00:06:20.880I'm not saying you can't do this. I'm just saying don't do it until you get your house in order and get your recruiting and retention back on pace.
00:06:32.360Right now, it is severely off pace and they know that.
00:06:38.600So this is a way of saying, OK, let's shape this up.
00:06:43.220Then once you have shaped it up, then you can go back to visiting whether or not you want to have this mandate on this particular shot and it brings some common sense to bear.
00:06:58.920But so far, the Department of Defense has removed 3,300 Marines, 1,800 soldiers, 1,800 sailors and 900 airmen from active duty service because they did not get the shot.
00:07:16.020We also see this happening with the National Guard.
00:07:18.920And what we are doing is getting this mandate off the books.
00:07:24.360Then a step two will be how we go about opening the door for these individuals to return to service.
00:07:35.080And the first thing is get the mandate off the books.
00:07:38.220Well, and again, good on you for for taking care of it, because you took the leadership role.
00:07:45.100I've got to ask you to General Petraeus interviewed saying that the two big issues for him are the military readiness priorities for NDAA and giving more money to Ukraine.
00:08:01.320And by the way, pointing out to everyone that the outrage over the mandates, vaccine mandates for the military were manufactured.
00:08:15.420I have to believe you aren't too thrilled with General Petraeus and his remarks there.
00:08:39.040Others had family members who had had an adverse reaction after having taken the shot.
00:08:45.600And the doctor had said, well, maybe the kids don't want to get this thing or someone would have a brother or a sibling that had myocarditis following getting the shot.
00:08:57.360And they didn't want to take the shot.
00:09:00.780These are things that would fall under the category of medical exemptions.
00:09:05.740And as I said, they were at 0.0044 in approvals of those requests for medical exemption.
00:09:17.800So, of course, you know, there are times when people will say, I can't take a flu shot or I have a reaction to certain types of vaccines.
00:09:29.620I can't take this or I can't take that.
00:09:31.700And generally, the military finds a workaround on those issues.
00:09:40.060But when you're not even hitting a half percent on these, you're not hitting 1%, you're not hitting 5%, then that's where your problem comes in.
00:11:36.020Let me ask you this, Senator, because this audience is not going to be, you know, is not interested in having to go through and do the math because they know they've got Mitch McConnell as the minority leader in the Senate to protect them, to be fiscally responsible.
00:11:53.380Where in the heck has he been and why is he going along and permitting this?
00:11:58.760We would hope that we are going to see the Republican conference come together and vote against this.
00:12:04.980I've talked to some of my House colleagues this morning, and of course, they are fighting it.
00:12:12.560We have never, never, never, never had the House flip or a chamber flip and then come along and do this kind of behemoth of a spending bill.
00:12:26.720Kevin McCarthy, as Speaker of the House, should have the ability to come back in January with Republican appropriators and build out this budget.
00:12:40.320But the question I ask is, where in the hell is Mitch McConnell and why is he making it possible for the Marxist Dems to win on this and eliminate?
00:12:51.020You know, Lou, what I'm hearing is that he is working with Kevin McCarthy.
00:12:57.660And I think that a lot of people are supporting McCarthy in this.
00:13:03.140I think what's happening is they're pushing against some of the appropriators that are Republican and Democrat.
00:13:11.900And, of course, Leahy is getting ready to retire.
00:13:15.600He wants to have his name on the final budget.
00:13:18.540But that is coming at the expense of the future of our children and grandchildren.
00:13:23.720We have to remember running up this kind of debt is a danger to us because you've got China.
00:14:03.820And she and the Republicans deserve great credit for rolling back those vaccine mandates that should never have been ordered in the first place.
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