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A discussion of coronavirus vaccines got so heated during a board meeting in San Diego Tuesday night that a public attendee unleashed a heinous, racist attack before being booted from security and abandoned by a radio station he worked for.
San Diego County’s legislature used the meeting to provide routine updates on new cases of COVID-19, hospital admissions, transmission rates, and how vaccination rates can prevent the coronavirus from spreading across the county. Officials also spoke about children between the ages of 5 and 11 who were vaccinated.
But residents were able to offer open comments during the session, and more than a dozen stood around a podium to express their contempt and concern about the pandemic. San Diego does not have an indoor vaccine mandate, but many attendees used the meeting to voice doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness and to question why there were COVID-19 restrictions in the first place. A spokesman then turned his pandemic rant into a wave of personal digs.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Jason Robo said to the public behind him, according to a recording of the meeting. “Traitor,” he turned to the board members.
After expressing skepticism about the pandemic and the vaccine, Robo urged board members to resign.
“Vargas,” Robo said to Nora Vargas, a Latina, the chairman of the board, “I can’t wait for your arteries to clog. You’re not doing it fast enough. “
With the public laughing in the background, he told board chairman Nathan Fletcher to kill himself and board chairman Terra Lawson-Remer to hang like a monkey on a tree.
Then Robo switched to Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county health officer who is Black.
“Wooten,” he said, “you’re a bloody Aunt Jemima. Sweet syrup will make your diabetic … “
Vargas interrupted the hateful talk and asked Robo to apologize to Wooten, which he declined. The two of them yelled back and forth until security got Robo to leave the podium.
The NAACP chairman in San Diego told CBS 8 that the “Branch and its members were appalled” at the outbreak.
“[Dr. Wooten] is employed. She is not elected and is the top officer, “President Francine Maxwell told the news agency on Wednesday. “It was disgusting. Maybe this man wants people to come to his place of work and do what he did last night. Someone is shouting expletives; talking about someone’s weight; and someone called a monkey, we really are like that sunk deep?
“He was a racing bait,” she continued. “Calling a black woman from [Wooten’s] Stature with her certificates, an Aunt Jemima with her degrees – that was completely disrespectful. She has been under constant attack for over 18 months. We have to go ahead and put a directive on the chairman and create a safe working environment because this man should have been stopped long beforehand [Vargas] had said something. “
Robo, a would-be stand-up comedian known in some parts of California for his bizarre and often racist activism efforts, received quick backlash for his outburst.
He reportedly lost his unpaid job at KMUD Garberville radio station in Redwood and was blacklisted from appearances at the Mad House Comedy Club in San Diego.
According to the Times of San Diego, the radio station’s news director said in a statement, “The volunteer programmer in question has little to no direct relationship with the station as its pre-recorded show is submitted. We want to make it clear that their opinions do not reflect our values. While these statements were being made on an external platform, we started the discussion about your future as a volunteer … Although we understand the importance of freedom of expression, we recognize the difference between it and hate speech. “
The Times also reported that the founder of Mad House said in a statement, “We’re an uncensored comedy club. As a company, we are politically neutral. However, “uncensored” is not a green light to be racist. We have a diverse group of employees that we love. We have a diverse group of artists that we love. We have a diverse group of customers that we love. We stand by them all and will not allow Mr. Robo to appear on any show at the Mad House, including the open microphone. “
However, not everyone agreed that Robo should have been interrupted. Almost two hours after speaking, another public participant stepped onto the podium to justify the disgusting outburst as free speech.
“MS. Vargas,” he began, “[the] First Amendment is a very difficult thing. It’s ugly. But it’s also very precious. Afterwards you could have spoken and given [Robo] its two minutes – as ugly as they were. “
In a non-broadcast interview with NBC 7, Robo claimed he attacked Vargas because he felt she was “not a good representative” of her ethnicity. He also claimed that his comedian status somehow justified his attempt to bring up the race. He compared the concept of talking about race to people being forced to get vaccinated. Then he claimed he couldn’t be racist because he had previously dated a woman who was Black and Cherokee.
Prior to his racism and hateful tantrum, Robo told the council meeting that the pandemic was planned and a “willful fraud”. He compared searching the Internet for the truth to searching for “a child in John Wayne Gacy’s house.” Robo accused the board of being “servants of the pharmaceutical industry” and shutting down beaches during the pandemic, which he said had killed people, and of being “Vax killers”.
“Then hire the VAX. You’re basically a Vax killer, ”he accused. “We are your backlash. You should resign. “
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