Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and senior adviser to Donald Trump, Jr., railed against the Biden administration’s reversal on the Chinese coronavirus — ushering in new mandates and hinting that lockdowns could be in the future — and warned Republicans that “COVID authoritarianism” is the “biggest fight in front of us” as Democrats continue to seek more power.
“It’s almost been a year and a half of these crazy COVID authoritarian restrictions, and if you remember, when Joe Biden was running for president, he ran on being the guy who would end this pandemic,” Surabian said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
US President Joe Biden speaks to the media as he walks to Marine One (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Surabian briefly walked through Biden’s inconsistencies, as the then-presidential hopeful insinuated on the campaign trail that lockdowns remained on the table, only to backtrack after backlash. But “fast forward eight months, and what’s coming out of his mouth? That there may be more lockdown restrictions,” Surabian said, explaining that he does not view the Biden’s backpedaling as a “surrender” to the virus. Rather, he thinks it is a product of a radical left’s quest for power.
“What I think it is, is Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, these radial Democrat governors, they got a taste, they got a taste of unfathomable power because of coronavirus. They got a taste of what it was like to not live in a Constitutional republic but to live in a country that is strictly ruled by man, by politicians, and not the people they’re supposed to represent. And now, they just refuse to give that power up,” he explained, delivering a stringent warning to Republicans, particularly those running for office.
“If you can’t fight COVID authoritarianism with everything that you have, then we can’t trust you to fight for anything else. Because this is the fight. These governors, these Democrats, want to keep our kids masked up in school. They want to keep businesses closed down,” he said, noting a correlation between the coronavirus response and the 9/11 response which he said was “a never-ending security state bureaucracy doing things that absolutely have nothing to do with stopping terrorism.”
“Once these politicians get a taste of power, they don’t want to give it up,” he said.
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Surabian said the administration’s current coronavirus response is “extra ironic” coming from Biden, because his campaign was predicated on defeating the virus, and that was his biggest criticism of former President Donald Trump. Yet now, in August 2021, Biden is calling for masking kids in school and hinting at more lockdowns.
Surabian added that House Republicans need to “immediately” call officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and others in if they get the majority back.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responds to questions by Senator Rand Paul during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
He also turned his attention to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), bashing her for “calling for mandatory European-style vaccine passports.”
“[It is] the government forcing private businesses to have vaccine verification to be able to go out to eat. To be able to go to a ballgame. It is totally anti-American. Our founders are turning in their grave. They [Democrats] want to turn the land of the free into a techno-authoritarian state where woke corporations and Big Tech act as the government’s enforcers. … they want to use COVID to change the character of this country, of this republic, forever, and we need to fight like this is the biggest fight in front of us, because it really is,” he said.
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Rochelle Walensky listens during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
While Surabian said some Republicans “cowered in fear” during the lockdowns last year because they were “fearful of being attacked by the media, being attacked by the Faucis of the world, being attacked as somebody who wants people to die of corona even though that’s such an insane accusation,” he said they are “now saying enough is enough.”
Surabian also identified the big “tell,” which he says shows the Biden administration’s decisions are not based on science. It all comes down to the fact that they are focusing on virus cases — not hospitalizations or death, he said.
“They don’t care about the science,” he continued before blasting D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) for reinstating an indoor mask mandate in the nation’s capital, despite the fact that deaths from the coronavirus in the last two weeks are in the single digits in that area. In fact, someone was more likely to die of a homicide in D.C. in that same time period, as Washington Political Editor and Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle pointed out.
DC Mayor Muriel Browser listens during a public safety briefing at the Marion S. Barry, Jr., Building in Washington, DC. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Ultimately, Surabian said “now is the time for mass civil disobedience.”
“Now is the time for mass non-compliance of these mandates — of these unconstitutional mandates,” he said. “Show me where in the Constitution they gave any of these governors the right to just unilaterally shut businesses down or force a mask on your face. It doesn’t exist. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we even allowed this to happen.”