Tipsheet

Tom Cotton: Biden's 'Unlawful' Vaccine Mandate Is a 'Political Distraction'

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers and private businesses was met with a wave of backlash following the overreaching edict. While the Biden administration navigates other pressing crises, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) called the mandate a “distraction.”

“This new federal vaccine mandate is just a political distraction. It’s probably unlawful and it’s almost certainly counterproductive. It’s a political distraction because Joe Biden campaigned last year preposterously by attacking Donald Trump,” Cotton said on Friday. “He said he was going to get it [COVID] under control, he thought the economy was going to bounce back because of the vaccines that the Trump administration created. Yet here he is after the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, his poll numbers plummeting, he’s trying to shift the focus away from those other crises.”

After announcing the mandate, President Biden would not speak to the constitutionality of the edict, which is sure to be challenged. He said that the vaccine mandate was not about freedom or individual choice for Americans.