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Defiant Newsmax host Steve Cortes says he ‘will not comply’ after network imposes vaccine mandate

November 7, 2021 | | Print Article
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Newsmax host Steve Cortes has announced he is not on board with the Biden administration-imposed COVID-19 vaccine mandate that applies to any company with 100-or-more employees.

The conservative news network reportedly informed employees via email last Thursday that it will go along with the rule promulgated by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

“The company decree requires all employees be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022, or else they will be forced to undergo a weekly Covid test,” Mediaite reported.

Cortes, a former senior Trump campaign adviser and ex-CNN contributor, took to Twitter to leave no doubt where he stands on the matter:

“I will not comply [with] any organization’s attempt to enforce Biden’s capricious & unscientific Medical Apartheid mandate. I will not be forced into the injection, nor will I disclose my vaccination status. No one should be pressured to choose between medical privacy & their job.”

Cortes’ position should probably come as no surprise. Last week during his Newsmax show, he declared that “there is zero, and I mean zero, moral or ethical obligation for anyone to be compelled to get vaccinated,” and that a mandate constitutes “insane workplace discrimination.”

With a “do not comply” label, Cortes subsequently tweeted out a screenshot of a message from Steve Bannon’s Gettr account in which the latter wrote, “Cortes is a former college football player and boxer — ‘bad hombre’ with no backdown in his DNA.”

Cortes refers to himself as a bad hombre in his Twitter bio.

Separately, political pundit and Fox News host Don Bongino has apparently reached an impasse with Cumulus Media, his radio show’s distributor, over his opposition to that company’s vaccine mandate.

A cohort of employees in the healthcare and first-responding sectors around the country are also resisting vaccine mandates for various reasons.

In a related development, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has temporarily put Biden’s vaccine mandate on hold.

“But Saturday’s move [by the court] provided momentum for a wide coalition of opponents of the rule, who have argued that it is unconstitutional…It was unclear whether the stay would be a procedural blip for the Biden administration or the first step in the unwinding of the mandate. At the core of the legal challenge is the question of whether OSHA exceeded its authority in issuing the rule and whether such a mandate would need to be passed by Congress,” the New York Times explained.

Many Americans are pro-vaccine but oppose mandates. At this point, based on some preliminary rulings that have already been handed down, however, it does not appear that, in the end, there are five votes on the U.S. Supreme Court — which ultimately has the final say on legal issues — to block a mandate.

Cortes responded to the development by tweeting, “This battle is far from over, and everyone should remember which employers were eager to bend to Biden to enforce his dictatorial Medical Apartheid mandates…”

In a recent appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show, her former Fox News colleague Eric Bolling, who is apparently vaccinated and also works for Newsmax, put forth the following theory:

The biggest donor class to Joe Biden’s run for president and to the Democrats, the number one, there’s no one that spends more money lobbying than Big Pharma. They throw money into election coffers, and they lobby. They spend more money making sure that they’re gonna keep this cycle going. And that’s how it works. It’s all about the money for the Democrats, for their reelections; it’s all about the money for Big Pharma because they sell a ton of stuff…

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Robert Jonathan
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