Geraldo can be absolutely insufferable and his defense of Trump was, well, indefensible, but the broken clock can be right twice a day and when Geraldo is right, he’s really right because he’s infuriatingly smart. Additionally, because Geraldo is a Fox News contributor when he’s right, it almost always means a fight.

Good must see T.V.

Today, as it often is, it was Geraldo v. Jessie Watters as the warm-up. Watters wanted to use the oldest bigoted justification in the book for keeping immigrants out and villainizing them at the same time. “Dirty, diseased, people.”

Mediaite provides the transcript, we provide the color commentary:

Rivera criticized Jesse Watters for linking a rise in covid cases in some states to immigration policy, saying he’s “appalled” by him making that claim “without any evidence.”

“Where is your proof?” he asked.

“It’s called common sense, Geraldo.”

“Common sense is not proof!”

We would like to point out that if a rise in cases is common sense proof of a terrible immigration policy, then Donald Trump’s policy of jailing people at the border was the worst policy in history, since millions of cases, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, happened on his watch. It is also common sense that Natalie Portman should want to marry someone on the staff, it just doesn’t make it true.

Additionally, check out the Red-state v. Blue state percentages, and not the total population. You will see the “proof” one needs to demonstrate the problem.

Right now, 20% of the problem is Florida, because 20% of the new cases come from Florida. Given that at any point in time Florida is responsible for 25% of the country’s problems generally, we suppose it was only a matter of time until COVID hit close to 25%.

“You don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of these variants are popping up in the very places on the border that Biden has opened?” Watters shot back.

Rivera accused him of “bend[ing] over backwards to demonize that population.” Watters said he’s “demonizing Joe Biden.”

Of course. Because why wouldn’t it be Joe Biden’s fault. Everything else is. It couldn’t possibly be that there was a massive backlog of immigrants due to Trump’s grotesque immigration policy and now wave after wave is coming because they see it as possibly safe again. They are not necessarily being allowed in. But at least they know their kids won’t be taken and they know they’ll get a hearing.

Then it got real. Geraldo want nuts over the anti-vaxer crowd:

If you are unvaccinated then you should at least get tested every week, on your own or understand why you are banned from the VA, why you are banned from restaurants, why you are banned from other businesses and colleges increasingly, and they should be. Because it’s selfish. If you are unvaccinated and you are going around without being tested, you are an arrogant, selfish SOB.

Gregg Gutfield wanted proof that Geraldo knows it’s unvaccinated people walking around spreading the disease, to which we say, *Ahem, *Cough, *Cough, *cough. It is also tough to track people “spreading the disease” since people with the vaccine don’t get the disease (though the jury is out on whether they can still spread it.) They are not coughing all over everything.

Geraldo had proof: “You want evidence? 99 percent of the people sick in the hospitals in Los Angeles County of covid were unvaccinated. How is that for proof?” 

That is not bad proof. It would pass the 5-sigma particle test in physics. Good enough for us.

Waters then put out the specious argument:

“What happened to ‘my body, my choice’?”

“I do not believe ‘my body, my choice’ when it comes to the damn vaccine. I want you to be vaccinated, and if you are not vaccinated you have to have a reason like [being] immunocompromised.”

“I am absolutely in the camp of no shirt, no shoes, no vaccine, no service.”

First of all, we don’t believe in the government forcing anyone to inject much of anything in their arms. On that, we agree with Fox. Parents have opted out of vaccination programs at school for a while and that’s murky legality. But “my body my choice” doesn’t apply because being pregnant and-or having an abortion cannot take the life of the grandpa in front of you at Jamba Juice. You may want control of your body, but when that choice can then take someone else’s body and put it in the ground, no – that’s not the same.

It is not a good comparison, at all. But as for no socks, no shoes, no service? No different than Twitter. A private company can kick your ass out for any reason except race, creed, religion, etc. If they want unvaccinated people off their property, that’s America, land of the free and home of the brave.

Nice job Geraldo.

Geraldo Rivera Says it's time to start banning unvaccinated people from restaurants, businesses and colleges. pic.twitter.com/o4ZFCjGkAb

— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) July 27, 2021

The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LeftScoop.news. Contact us for guidelines on submitting your own commentary.