Millions of Americans were listening. Were they listening in the White House?
The Coast Guard rescue diver who got a personal phone call from President Joe Biden last week had a personal message for the president on Wednesday.
He just delivered it in front of a national audience on one of the top-rated shows on cable television.
Aviation Survival Technician 2nd Class Zach Loesch got a brief moment of national fame on Friday when Biden thanked him for his lifesaving efforts amid the deadly destruction of Hurricane Ian striking Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In one case, as Breitbart reported, Loesch rescued a disabled woman and her husband who’d been trapped in a back bedroom of their home.
Loesch’s fame only grew, though, when news got out that he is facing mandatory discharge from the service because he has refused to get a coronavirus vaccine. That status places him among more than 2,600 Coast Guard members on tap for separation, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
And Loesch’s message to Biden?
He doesn’t want that separation to happen, he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Wednesday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“I don’t know why they would want to be doing that,” Loesch said. “But I do know that I would like to continue working this job. And it’s a job that I’m really good at and a lot of others are really good at.”
Check out the full conversation here:
Set aside the absurdity of the president’s administration punishing a man who had just personally earned the gratitude of the commander in chief. (As most Americans know, it’s an inconvenient truth that the cognitively challenged Biden might not have been entirely aware of what he was talking about when the conversation took place.)
There’s a bigger question here over how much more of the draconian response to the COVID-19 pandemic Americans are willing to accept.
For all intents and purposes, the pandemic is a thing of the past. Biden himself declared that in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS’ “60 Minutes” broadcast Sept. 18, 10 days before Ian made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida. (Again, Biden’s faculties aren’t what they should be, and he tempered his remark later in the week, but Americans who have been living without masks for months know the truth of what he said.)
Yet members of the military, who have volunteered to put their lives at risk for the country — and, like Loesch, have proved how real that commitment is — are still facing career-ending discharges for refusing to be vaccinated against it?
Loesch submitted a request for exemption from the requirement on religious grounds and was denied, according to Breitbart. His appeal was likewise denied.
“Are you really leaving because they want you to take this shot?” Carlson asked at the top of the interview.
“That’s correct,” he responded, adding that he’s already signed intent-to-discharge papers, which leave a 30- to 60-day window for the discharge to take place.
Should the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate be abandoned?
But Loesch is still more than willing to continue his service if the Biden administration would relent.
That’s a change the White House needs to make not just for the Coast Guard — which is the smallest branch of the U.S. military. According to the Daily Mail, 15,000 U.S. servicemen and women from all branches are facing discharge over the vaccine.
“There [were] other rescue swimmers down there in Ian with me, and we were all doing the same thing,” Loesch told Carlson. “And we would all like to keep our jobs.”
That was the message he delivered Wednesday night, on a cable television show with an audience that regularly surpasses 3 million viewers. (The audience was 3.4 million the day before Loesch’s interview, according to USTVDB.com, a ratings website.)
Was anyone at the White House listening?
