Appearing on the popular Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show on iHeart stations on Wednesday, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan continued his theme of standing up for American workers who are being fired because they won’t take the Covid-19 vaccine. He recounted some of his experiences over the weekend bonding with the truckers of Alaska A partial transcript:
SEN. SULLIVAN: Well, look, people are very motivated to support not just the truckers but this whole issue of this illegal, unconstitutional vaccine mandate. I think, you know, the rally that I was at back home over the weekend, this is bringing out people who don’t always protest. This is bringing about average Alaskans, average Americans ’cause people are tired of this.
And I will tell you, the one thing that I tried to emphasize in my remarks is a lot of people right now have amnesia. Think about it, you guys. The truckers and other front-line workers during the pandemic two years ago when things were just hitting our country, they were telling everybody, “Hey, you gotta telework.” Well, guess what?
There’s a lot of people in America who couldn’t telework: The people who are keeping the shelves in our stores full, the people who are producing oil and gas, the front-line police and first responders, our military. So I was saying, “Hey, it’s not just the truckers who we want to support, but we gotta remember these are the people who kept us going during the pandemic,” and now they’re being forgotten or being told they’re gonna be fired if they don’t get a vaccine. It’s outrageous.
CLAY: What are you hearing, Senator Sullivan…? I appreciate you coming on with us. What are you hearing from your constituents about supply chain issues all over Alaska, I would imagine, maybe even more pronounced than in many other parts of the country given how difficult it can be to ship things and move things around? And what are you hearing about this massive, I feel like, outpouring against covid restrictions in general? I know Alaska has got a great affinity for freedom. What are your constituents telling you in the state about both those issues?
SEN. SULLIVAN: Well, they’re interrelated, and it’s a great question because, as you mentioned, we in Alaska are very vulnerable to supply chains. A lot of what the Canadians say is their policies directly impact us. I was talking to a trucker at that rally who said for months and months he was driving through Canada to deliver supplies to Alaskans. He had actually gotten a vaccination, but now he said, “I’m being required to get a booster, and I can’t supply the people of Alaska.”
Literally one of the guys at the rally who I was talking to. So to me, they are very interconnected. But again, I will say that my constituents are just tired of this federal overreach. Here’s something that I think was really important, and it hasn’t been discussed well. When we put together the CARES Act — and look, nobody knew what was really gonna happen.
That was the first big relief bill. The overriding principle that we put in that bill — Democrats and the Republicans, Trump administration, all of us working together — was if you’re a business or an airline or something that’s getting federal aid, you actually have to keep your workers. You have to keep them. The whole point of the CARES Act was keeping people together, keeping people working.
Joe Biden comes in, you guys, and takes a sledgehammer to that principle and flips it on its head and says to employers, “If people don’t get vaccinated, you gotta go fire the very people who are keeping us safe when there was no vaccine.” Think about the illogical nature of that. So I think the average Alaskan is viewing these mandates as something that we’re just not tired of but that the government, the federal government has no right to enact.
And the one thing I said at the rally that I think a lot of people wanted to hear was that we’re actually winning. We are winning. When these unconstitutional and illegal vaccination mandates have been challenged, we won in almost every court, including the U.S. Supreme Court. – Sen. Dan Sullivan
That’s a resolution that has the force of law in the Senate. It passed with bipartisan numbers of senators — (chuckles) Democrats voted for it, too — to overturn Biden’s illegal mandate. So we’re winning, and I think the people are behind us, and I think there’s just a weariness here, but also a sense that the government has gotten way out of its lane in terms of its constitutional and legal authorities.
To read more or listen to Sullivan on the “Travis and Buck Show,” follow this link.
