De Blasio Tears Into Firefighters Faking Sick Leave to Avoid Vaccine, Joe Scarborough Says ‘Fire Them’
As New Yorkers head to the polls to vote on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s replacement Tuesday, de Blasio joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe to praise the effectiveness of his city workforce vaccine mandate and tear into its critics.
“Let me give you the update, and we have breaking news for you,” de Blasio started off saying, “we put a mandate in place on October 20th, and as of today, 92 percent of the New York City workforce is vaccinated.” That’s “2,000 more vaccinations in the last 24 hours” boasted the sitting mayor.
De Blasio argued his success proves that “every mayor in America, every governor in America, every CEO of a business in America” should put a vaccine mandate in place to “help us end the Covid era once and for all.” Host Joe Scarborough asked de Blasio to weigh in on the mandate’s critics and those union leaders and city workers refusing to get the vaccine.
De Blasio expressed his frustration with the “wrong-headed folks spreading lies, spreading misinformation,” saying that “they are endangering, actually their colleagues, endangering their fellow New Yorkers.”
The mayor commended “some union leaders [who] have stepped up in recent days,” but added that “several unions have been in my view downright unpatriotic the way they handled it. They put their own internal politics ahead of the needs of the people”.
The mayor continued, “by the way, we have firefighters faking sick leave the last couple of days, saying they’re sick when they’re not and leaving their fellow firefighters in a lurch and creating a danger for all New Yorkers.”
Scarborough chimed in, saying “fire them” — with de Blasio replying, “That’s unconscionable and I assure you they’re going to experience some consequences for what they’ve done.”
Scarborough ended the segment praising New York City’s current Covid numbers,
“You want evidence vaccines work, look no further than New York City’s numbers on infections … So much lower than most states,” he said.
A potentially good sign for de Blasio who on Monday filed paperwork with New York’s Board of Elections to create a fundraising committee that could be used for a potential campaign for governor in 2022. Despite his tough words for critics of his vaccine mandate, de Blasio ended the Morning Joe segment reiterating the message that his leadership on Covid is a model for other parts of the country — a possible preview of his next campaign.
Watch above, via MSNBC
