News
Featured Image
Joe Biden offered false information about COVID-19 during a town hall event at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here. 

CINCINNATI, July 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Joe Biden pushed patent lies about COVID-19 vaccines and previewed a possible mask mandate for school children last night at a “town hall” organized by CNN and hosted by Mount St. Joseph’s University. The invitation-only event drew criticism from local Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and from pro-life groups who protested the “most pro-abortion president in U.S. history.” 

Biden began the CNN town hall by lying about coronavirus vaccines, falsely stating that people who receive the shots cannot die or be hospitalized as a result of COVID-19. “We have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten a vaccination,” he said. “This is a simple, basic proposition. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you are not going to die.”  

COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated have resulted in roughly 5,400 deaths or hospitalizations in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To date, the CDC has reported 6,207 deaths shortly after COVID-19 vaccination that may be linked to the vaccines, though those figures might a significant undercount, however, experts have said. The CDC previously recorded as many as 12,313 potentially vaccine-linked fatalities.  

British chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance also noted last week that 40 percent% of COVID-19 patients currently being admitted to hospitals in the U.K. have had two coronavirus shots. A model by the U.K. government in April acknowledged that vaccinated people would likely compose up to 70 percent of deaths and hospitalizations from a “third wave” of the virus. 

Later in his town hall, Biden hinted at a new mask mandate for unvaccinated students, saying, “The CDC is going to say that what we should do is everyone over the age – under the age of 12 should probably be wearing a mask in school. That’s probably what’s going to happen.” 

He added that “those over the age of 12 who are able to get vaccinated, if you’re vaccinated, you shouldn’t wear a mask.” Just days ago, several “fully vaccinated” Texas Democrats who fled their state to block a Republican election bill tested positive for COVID-19 and may have spread it to one of Biden’s staffers after traveling without masks on a private jet. 

Biden also once again praised Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, calling him a “bright and really tough guy.” “I talked to Xi Jinping in China, who I know well,” Biden said. “We don’t agree on a lot of things. He’s a bright and really tough guy.” In February, Biden offered similar praise, calling Xi, who has overseen a genocide of millions of members of the Uighur ethnic group and who appears to have had business connections to Biden’s son, “very bright” and “very tough.”  

Backlash from archbishop, pro-lifers 

Pro-life advocates slammed Mount St. Joseph University after it was revealed this week that the Catholic school would be hosting Joe Biden.  

“What compassion and charity is shown the unborn when the university hosts a president who claims to be a Catholic, yet has the most pro-abortion administration in the history of our country?” Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati said in a statement calling Biden the “most pro-abortion president in U.S. history.”  

“Tell them this is unacceptable for a Catholic university and they should be ashamed to host a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn lives,” the group added. Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati organized a protest at the university yesterday. 

Biden, who identifies as “Catholic” despite his pro-abortion apostasy, did not mention abortion at the CNN town hall and was not asked questions from the invite-only audience about the radical abortion platform that has earned him public condemnation from the U.S. Catholic bishops.  

Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati on Tuesday also called on people to message Archbishop Schnurr and tell him to cancel the Biden event. The Cincinnati archdiocese issued a press release that day saying he would not have given approval for the town hall had he been notified about it. 

“Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr has not been contacted by any involved party about the upcoming visit of President Joseph R. Biden to Cincinnati to participate in a CNN town hall meeting at Mount St. Joseph University,” the statement related. “Archbishop Schnurr has therefore not been asked for, nor would he have granted, his approval for any such event to occur on Catholic premises.”  

Mount St. Joseph University “operates under the sponsorship of the Sisters of Charity and not under the direct oversight of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,” according to the archdiocese.  

Schnurr, the archbishop of Cincinnati for more than a decade, has defended life in the past and voted with the vast majority of the U.S. bishops’ conference last month to draft a document on the Eucharist that may admonish pro-abortion “Catholics.” His name was added to a letter in May organized by liberal prelates seeking to halt discussion of Eucharistic worthiness, but Schnurr has said that the addition of his name was done without his permission and has distanced himself from the letter, The Pillar reported

Along with Schnurr, Dusty Rhodes, a Catholic, Democrat auditor of a county surrounding Cincinnati, rebuked Biden’s CNN town hall. “Fake Catholic President at fake Catholic college,” Rhodes tweeted Monday.  

Mount St. Joseph nevertheless staunchly refused to back down from hosting Biden, celebrating itself as “a diverse and inclusive place.” 

“The University has always been and will continue to be a diverse and inclusive place where people from different races, ethnicities, social backgrounds, beliefs, and religions can come together to discuss and share their unique perspectives,” the school said. “We look forward to introducing the Mount to a nationally televised prime time audience.” 

The university had said Tuesday that it was “humbled and honored” that CNN and the Biden White House “have recognized Mount St. Joseph University as an outstanding institution of higher learning that is capable and willing to host such an important event,” local news reported

The Sisters of Charity, while “pleased” about the event, have disavowed all responsibility for it, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. “All decisions about the event are being made by CNN and Mount Saint Joseph and do not involve the Sisters of Charity. CNN is utilizing the Mount’s facility and will make the decisions on attendance at the event, whose questions will be asked of the President, etc.”