Green Bay Packers quarter Aaron Rodgers, whose 2021 season is now over after his team lost at home on a last-second San Francisco 49ers field goal Saturday night, appeared to question President Joe Biden’s victory or, at a minimum, his margin of victory in an ESPN interview that was published last week.
Rodgers, who has become a target on the left after his refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccine, also addressed Biden’s comments regarding the continued spread of the virus despite the vast majority of the rest of the country being vaccinated.
The future Hall of Famer was responding specifically to Biden’s comments to a Green Bay fan while touring tornado damage in Kentucky last month when he said, “Tell that quarterback he’s gotta get the vaccine.”
“When the President of the United States says, ‘This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ it’s because him and his constituents, – which I don’t know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking — but I guess he got 81 million votes,” Rodgers told ESPN in the interview, which was published Friday.
“And you still have this fake White House set saying that this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated, that’s not helping the conversation,” he added.
Fox News added:
Rodgers – whose Packers were eliminated from the NFL postseason by the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday night, despite being the NFC’s top-seeded team – first sparked criticism last fall when he said he had been “immunized” and later clarified that he hadn’t been vaccinated.
He has defended using the term “immunized” and told ESPN that players being asked about their vaccination status has amounted to a “witch hunt.”
“I had a plan going in for that question to be asked,” Rodgers told ESPN, recalling his strategy going into his media availability. “It was a pseudo witch hunt going on — who was vaccinated, who wasn’t vaccinated.
“I was in a multi-month conversation that turned into an appeal process with the NFL at that time, and my appeal hinged on that exact statement [immunized]. So what I said was, number one, factually true. I went through a multi-immunization process. And at the end of that, I don’t know what you would call it, I would call it immunized,” he added.
The Packers signal-caller contracted the virus in November though he had previously said he was “immunized.” He has since been widely criticized for it, but he refused to back down in his ESPN interview.
“When in the course of human history has the side that’s doing the censoring and trying to shut people up and make them show papers and marginalize a part of the community ever been [the correct side]?” Rodgers said. “We’re censoring dissenting opinions? What are we trying to do? Save people from being able to determine the validity on their own or to listen and to think about things and come to their own conclusion?
“Freedom of speech is dangerous now if it doesn’t align with the mainstream narrative? That’s, I think first and foremost, what I wanted people to understand, and what people should understand is that there’s censorship in this country going on right now,” he continued.
“Are they censoring terrorists or pedophiles? Criminals who have Twitter profiles? No, they’re censoring people, and they’re shadow-banning people who have dissenting opinions about vaccines,” Rodgers added. “Why is that? Is that because Pfizer cleared $33 billion last year and Big Pharma has more lobbyists in Washington than senators and representatives combined? Why is the reason?
“When you censor and make pariahs out of anybody who questions what you believe in or what the mainstream narrative is, that doesn’t make any sense,” Rodgers added.
