CLAY: This is significant — and I’m not hearing it talked about very much at all, and I may have to build on this a bit going into the next segment here. But we all know that Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates have been taking a beating in all of our court system on a variety of different levels. And that’s because, as I’ve said — this is me putting my lawyer hat on for a little bit here — he’s tried to argue that he has the authority to implement this vaccine mandate under OSHA regulations.

That’s a wildly expansive reading of OSHA, which is a regulatory body and isn’t actually given, by and large, the kind of expansive scope and authority that Joe Biden is trying to claim for it. Well, what I said — and I think this is a good argument — is if there were really a great demand for a federal vaccine mandate, one way to demonstrate more legitimacy would be if there was a vote in Congress and the House and the Senate agreed with Joe Biden and said, “You know what? We need a federal vaccine mandate.”

But they haven’t done that. In fact, based on what happened late last night, the majority in the Senate, which remember is evenly divided 50/50, would now oppose Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate. I’ve hardly seen anybody talking about this. But Joe Manchin late last night put out a statement — West Virginia’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin — and he said, “I will not vote to shut down the government for political reasons. But let me be clear…”

Tonight I voted to prevent a government shutdown and fund the federal government through February 18th, 2022 through a continuing resolution. My full statement: pic.twitter.com/UBicLvMpeq

— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) December 3, 2021

This is a direct statement from Joe Manchin about Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate. Joe Manchin said, “I do not support any federal vaccine mandate on private businesses. That’s why I have cosponsored — and will strongly support — a bill to overturn the federal government vaccine mandate for private businesses. I have long said we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from covid-19.” He said he’s been vaccinated, he encourages people to do so, but he does not believe that the federal government should be enforcing this private vaccine mandate.