“You know,” Rep. Chip Roy is telling RealClearPolitics after balking at the administration’s latest COVID vaccine push and after all but telling President Biden to pound sand, “my dad had polio.”
It is a surprising start to the interview given that, about an hour earlier, the congressman tweeted a black-and-white image of a syringe. Federal health officials continue to have a hard time getting all Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus, and Biden had promised to send people “door-to-door” to get doses to the vulnerable. For Roy, that is when the president went too far. Hence, the cartoon syringe, a play on the famous “Come and Take It” flag, this time with an updated caption—“Come Inject It.”
Merchandise branded with that slogan will be available soon on his campaign website, but as the second-term Republican explains while driving along Interstate 10 somewhere in south Texas, he knows the importance of inoculation. He saw what can happen without them. “I grew up and I watched him live a life ravaged by that disease,” Roy says of his father. “I’m very pro-vaccine.”
The congressman calls the vaccine that banished polio “a great blessing.” He is “delighted” that children no longer have to worry about that debilitating disease. “Likewise,” Roy adds, “I’m delighted there are millions of people who are able to avail themselves of a [coronavirus] vaccine that they believe, in their calculation, is good for them and their well-being. That is great.”