It’s been quite a week for Allison Williams. An ESPN college basketball and football reporter for 10 years, she quit the network last week because she declined to get vaccinated, and ESPN rejected her request for an accommodation. On Thursday, Williams did an interview with Megyn Kelly on her eponymous SiriusXM show, Williams criticized the president and others easily given to dismiss our freedom via COVID-19 vaccination mandates. And on Friday it was announced she’s joining the conservative Daily Signal.
During said interview, Kelly asked Williams about President Joe Biden (stupidly) remarking last month that the vaccine mandate “isn’t about your freedom.” Williams torched him for throwing freedom under the bus:
I have never been so jarred by anything a president said. To hear the leader of the free world stand up and say, “this isn’t about your freedom, I thought ‘oh my God, it is ALWAYS about our freedom.”
If we don’t have freedom over our own bodies … we aren’t free. That was scary to me, that is something a dictator says. That is not something a leader of free people says.
Last May, ESPN ordered all on-site employees to get vaccinated and comply with various sports league requirements. In June, Disney (which owns ESPN), demanded vaccine compliance for all non-union employees. Williams called this coercion and said the issue is much bigger than a needle jab in one’s arm:
Everybody acts like ‘this was your choice, you chose not to get it, so get a different job. That’s not choice, that’s coercion. Consent is fundamental to everything we do if we want to be a free people.
Additionally, Williams said, “If we can’t have true and informed consent, what do we have? We don’t have freedom. That is why I think it’s so important for people to realize this is bigger than this mandate. This is bigger than this shot.”
Williams’s specific reason for declining the vaccine was concern about it’s possible negative impact on conceiving a child.
Now, she will be helping to lead a special sports series for The Daily Wire.
“The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing media companies and I am thrilled and honored to join them. I am proud to be a part of a company that fights for our rights and I cannot wait to bring agenda-free sports reporting to the Daily Wire’s members and millions of followers,” Williams said in a statement.
In announcing the move, editor emeritus Ben Shapiro tweeted:
Very proud to announce this. Freedom matters. And quality people should not lose their employment because Joe Biden or ESPN demands they surrender their independent judgment. https://t.co/GIsp4swncj
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 22, 2021
Good for Williams. She took a stand and came out okay.
