MSNBC's Scarborough: Biden should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan and force vaccines on teachers; union leaders need to shut up about not going back to work

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough went on a rant Monday morning imploring people to get vaccinated and specifically called on President Joe Biden to mandate that public school teachers get vaccinated so schools can reopen this fall.

And he made sure to mention that he does not want to hear unions leaders even start to talk about not being ready to return to classrooms in September over vaccine concerns.

What did he say?

As the COVID-19 Delta variant continues to surge across the country, debate has intensified over whether vaccines should be mandated for Americans, or at least for certain segments of the American population — including health care providers, law enforcement, firefighters, and transportation workers — in order to get back to "normal."

Scarborough made it clear Monday that he thinks everybody should be getting vaccinated and that it's unwise not to get the shots, specifically pointing out the need to require teachers to get vaxxed.

In an attempt to counter the "stupid as hell" argument that vaccine passports are a form of fascism, the "Morning Joe" host reminded "idiots" that the nation has been doing this with kindergartners for decades.

"This is what we have been doing as a country for over half a century," he said. "If you have a child and they were in public schools — or if you went to public schools or even private schools, then you had five vaccine passports, or whatever you want to call them. Your parents had to show proof that you'd been vaccinated for measles or mumps, polio, for a lot of other diseases, or else you could not get a public eduction."

Scarborough did not only challenge parents and those who are vaccine-hesitant as well as those opposed to vaccine passports, he also posed a challenge to President Biden.

"Joe Biden needs to make the tough choice right now, and he needs to start in his own political back yard," he said, adding that the president "needs to tell the teachers' union ... that every public school teacher needs to be vaccinated."

Scarborough reminded his viewers that unions were crying last school year that "we can't go back to school until we're all vaccinated, that's all we heard." But now "we're starting to hear some rumblings that we can't go back to school this fall."

"No, that's not an option," Scarborough insisted. "Our kids stayed home last year from school, and the results were absolutely devastating."

Biden needs to declare that "if you are a public school teacher, or you teach at a public university, as a condition of your job, you have to get vaccinated," he said.

The host added that he wants the president to insist that "we are not closing schools this fall; children will not be staying at home this fall looking at Zoom classes — they're going to be in because their teaches are going to be vaccinated."

Biden "needs to start there today."

Scarborough went on to say Biden needed to take a cue from President Ronald Reagan.

"Ronald Reagan did this with the air-traffic controllers," he said. "People thought it was going to be controversial. Actually, a funny thing happened — Americans actually respected the fact overwhelmingly that a politician made a strong decision that a lot of people thought was going to be unpopular."

Bottom line for Scarborough, if teachers are unwilling to get the shots, then they need to look for another job.

(H/T: Mediaite)