Over the past few years, Jordan Klepper has become best-known for embarrassing Trump fanatics all across America in his role as a roving Daily Show correspondent. This week, he broke the mold to train his lens on an unexpected target: anti-vax progressives.
“The discussion around vaccines and mandates tends to pit red state versus blue,” Klepper began in his newest segment. “But I had heard there was vaccine hesitancy in the elitist of the elite blue corners of the U.S.” So with that in mind, he headed to Southern California and immediately found himself in the middle of an anti-vaccination protest full of people who didn’t want to be labeled “anti-vaxxers.”
“Are you vaccinated?” Klepper asked one woman holding a “No to Mandates” sign. When she said no, he replied, “So you’re anti-vax?” She didn’t have a great answer to that.
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There were some purely deranged people who believed that Bill Gates was using vaccinations to reduce the global population as well as a series of shoppers outside of Erewhon, the “bougiest health food market in Venice Beach,” who seemed to think they were too healthy to get sick from COVID.
“If you live a lifestyle of wellness,” one woman told him, “then your body should be able to handle COVID.”
“I’m not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ per se, I’m a staunch anti-mandate person,” another man said before refusing to reveal whether he had received the shot.
By the end of the piece, Klepper concluded that, “no matter what part of the anti-vax world they come from, there’s one comparison they just can’t resist making.” He then cut to an interview with a German woman in a Bob Marley T-shirt who said “history is repeating itself” with vaccine mandates.
“‘Where are your papers? Where are your papers?’ It’s very similar to the Hitler times,” she said.
“So, like, Jewish people are fleeing Poland because they can’t get into gyms?” Klepper asked her.
“That’s not funny,” the woman shot back. She was wrong.
For more, listen to The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper on The Last Laugh podcast.
