The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper puts on his hyperbole HAZMAT suit and heads to NYC's anti-vaxxer protest

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the tail end of “hot vax summer,” we’re still dealing with the ever-shifting ideologies of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. Unwilling to believe in COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks or vaccines, or decide on what, if anything, they actually believe in, these so-called patriots aren’t satisfied with the 4.4 million deaths around the world and 628,000 here in the United States. At this point, it’s clear that they love death and want more of it. Hence the whole a year-and-a-half into the pandemic business.

But if we must understand the increasingly confusing belief systems and decisions of people who equate putting a light cloth over the mouth when going to get Thai food with being a Holocaust victim (which is *chef’s kiss* pretty rich coming from the conspiracy theory crowd), then maybe we let Jordan Klepper do the reporting from now on. The impeccable doublespeak of Klepper, which he honed over his years on The Daily Show, comes out in full force in this latest clip from the Emmy-nominated Fingers The Pulse. With a smirking sincerity, Klepper tries to follow the logic of the people protesting New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate, a mandate that thankfully got stronger since the protest, and uses that logic against the protesters—something we all yearn to do but know it’s a waste of time. The Big Apple is not the first place he looks to when he wants an “angry mob of people, screaming anti-science, deep-state, vaccine microchip conspiracy jazz.” But apparently, coastal elites aren’t immune to the allure of Facebook’s public misinformation landfill.

In this clip from Fingers The Pulse, Klepper finds out why some young republicans are tired of the “we live in a society” and “we, the people” sloganeering; why the lore of vaccine-fan George Washington isn’t applicable in this situation; and why we need to nip some problems in the bud before they get to Pennsylvania (vaccine mandates are the problem to be nipped, not COVID-19, mind you). But if we have to find out what these people think, we might as well have a few laughs along the way. Unfortunately, the reality of what anti-vaxxers are doing (endangering the lives of everyone in their community and prolonging the pandemic) is maybe a little too sad to face without a little gallows humor.