Brian Kilmeade had a major collision with
John Kirby over the U.S. military’s recruitment shortages, which the Fox News host blamed on policies requiring service members to be vaccinated for Covid.
The National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications appeared on
Fox & Friends on Tuesday, where Kilmeade noted that President
Joe Biden recently said that the
coronavirus crisis is “over.” As Kilmeade ran through
the stats of how many U.S. military members remain unvaccinated, he told Kirby, “you, as an admiral who knows what it takes and the sacrifice you make to join the military, to get kicked out like this, can you possibly talk some sense into this White House to reverse policy?”
Kirby defended the mandate as “a valid health requirement,” explaining “you want your troops to be ready, and part of being ready is being healthy and not having the ability to infect your unit and make their unit readiness any worse than it is.” He punctuated this by saying he is currently dealing with his own Covid case. Still, Kilmeade — who has
fueled vaccine hesitancy and
cast doubt on inoculations in the past — continued his retort.
“We all know that this vaccine does not address any of the variants we are currently experiencing,” Kilmeade claimed. “So, therefore, this minimal positive to get it now, which is why you don’t talk about it. To invest in our people and train them and then dismiss them for an experimental vaccine is folly when you can’t recruit. Every one of your branches can’t recruit their threshold, yet you are kicking out good men and women. How do you explain that?”
Kirby acknowledged that the army has tough recruitment standards, but he maintained his insistence that “you have a requirement to be healthy to be able to serve. And this is a valid military requirement.”
“You really think so?” Kilmeade scoffed.
“And, look, even if it doesn’t prevent you from getting Covid — I’m double boosted I got it myself here…” Kirby went on.
“That’s your decision,” Kilmeade interjected again as Kirby explained that a vaccine “makes the symptoms a lot less severe; it gets you back on duty.”
“So it’s worth kicking out the healthiest people in our country who are already sacrificing? It’s worth kicking them out?”
“We would rather not lose anybody from a retention perspective to have them leave the service earlier than they wanted or we wanted them to,” Kirby said. “But it’s a valid military requirement.”
“No, it isn’t,” Kilmeade scoffed. “This is an experimental vaccine that just came off the shelf. I know it’s not valid, and it’s risking our national security.”
Kirby continued his defense of vaccines as “a valid health requirement,” pointed out the multitude of vaccines that service members are required to get, and “health is central to our readiness as a military unit, and it’s not just about you.”
www.cdc.gov
