Asa Hutchinson clashes with Tucker Carlson on vaccination status

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson sparred with Asa Hutchinson after inquiring about the former Arkansas governor’s vaccination status on Friday.

Carlson, interviewing Hutchinson on stage at the conservative Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, asked the 2024 Republican presidential candidate how many Covid-19 vaccinations he had received and how he felt about his decision to do so in retrospect. Hutchinson confirmed that he had been vaccinated against Covid-19 and defended his choice as the “right decision of taking the vaccine for me,” but noted that others can “make a different decision.”

But before Hutchinson gave his answer, he lobbed the question back to Carlson.

“How many Covid shots did you take?” Hutchinson asked.

“Zero,” Carlson responded to a round of applause from the audience.

“I can see that you recoiled when I asked you that question,” said Carlson, a former Fox News anchor and longtime vaccine skeptic. “And I don’t think, honestly, you should be asking people about their medical care. But that became a matter of public policy, and I do think the whole country ought to pause and assess, ‘What did we just go through, and how do we feel about it now?’” So it’s a very straightforward question.”

Before confirming he had been vaccinated, Hutchinson touted his opposition to vaccine mandates as the governor of Arkansas, pointing to a law he signed that prohibited vaccination mandates among government employees. In 2021, Hutchinson also OK’d a law allowing employees to opt out of vaccination requirements from businesses — although he called the debate on the opt-out bill “harmful to our goal of increasing vaccination rates in Arkansas.”

Hutchinson did not address Carlson’s claim that there were “an awful lot of people injured” by vaccine mandates, instead going on to discuss his efforts to keep schools and small businesses open and avoid shelter-in-place orders during his term as governor.