published on July 14, 2024 in Informative Details

Laura Ingraham on vaccine mandates, abortion: 'Let people make their own personal medical decisions'

Laura Ingraham, 58, is the host of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, which is marking its 25th year of broadcasting this month. She lives in Northern Virginia.

You have been — if I may use the word — controversial.

Nah, never. I know this sounds very trite, but I feel incredibly privileged and blessed to be able to have, whatever it is, 44 minutes a night to talk to people and to be able to hear from them when I travel the country. I’m probably hated by half the country, and the other half is like, “Thanks for doing what you’re doing.” I really don’t mind the criticism at all. People have every right to disagree.

Have you ever apologized for anything you’ve said?

You mean in my professional life? I apologize all the time in my personal life — in my prayers. In the cable news world, things are moving fast and furious. My opinions are my opinions. Have I apologized? I can’t recall. When I’m passionate about something, I’m a human being. I can get carried away. I try to temper my frustration with understanding, as often as I can. One of my worst flaws is I’m not patient enough. And I work on it every day.

There was a time in Washington when things were a lot less partisan and the tenor was different. How do you feel about that?

I agree it’s really unfortunate. I think part of the reason that’s happened is because government has tried to make too many decisions in people’s lives, had too much control over people’s lives in a variety of ways. And I think when people retain less power to make decisions for themselves, a real divide develops.

My first radio show, the first show I ever did, in 2001, featured Christopher Hitchens and Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom used to come on my show frequently, as did John Kerry. We were casually friendly. I do agree that having an actual discourse on issues is preferable. And I enjoyed that very much.

You were at MSNBC at one point.

I started in TV right out of my law firm in 1996, at MSNBC and CBS simultaneously. It was a different time. But even then at CBS, you could see kind of the old guard — there were some great people there — but some were so annoyed: How dare you gallop into our corral and think that you could eat oats with us? I kept getting my name tag at CBS ripped off my door. It wasn’t just a prank.

I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes. I could have made a lot more friends. I’ve never been a great networker. But there was tension there back in those days. You kind of saw the beginning of this real divide.

So would you call yourself a libertarian?

I’m not a libertarian. I’m more of a populist conservative and always have been. I don’t really even identify myself as a Republican anymore.

The exit from Afghanistan has been a big issue, obviously, for your network and others. And I know that you’re not too charitable toward President Biden on that score.

Back to your bipartisan point. I actually think there’s been some refreshing bipartisanship, demanding accountability for what happened with this withdrawal.

You were the most listened to woman on radio and finished 2020 as the most watched woman on cable television. And you’re a breast cancer survivor. Do you feel any sense of having a special responsibility to women, and have you shown that in ways?

I think my responsibility is to be as candid and as authentic as I possibly can be with my viewers. And when I write, with my readers, and when I was on the radio, with my listeners.

I try to not involve my personal health struggles — I try not to make myself the story. But I’d like to think because of what I went through, I can give some helpful advice to people. And so that’s also been a blessing. I really don’t think I am anything special. I’m a lawyer, I’m a mom, I’m trying to figure out which schools are best for my kids [ages 16, 13 and 11], if they can get their homework done. That’s most of my life. It’s fun, though. The only thing that ultimately matters.

Yes, what else do you leave behind? That’s what I say.

Not an interview with Laura Ingraham.

Your three kids are very lucky because they were adopted by someone who obviously is of means. But does that raise questions about the rest of the children in the world who are struggling to get here with their parents, whether legally or illegally? Adoption is not immigration, but how would you answer a critic who says, in a way, she’s facilitating immigration?

I have been a passionate advocate for more and more frequent and easier international and domestic adoption. Every child is a child of God; every child we want the absolute best for here and across the globe. I think it’s quite a different story to say that because people adopt internationally, ipso facto we should bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of people across the globe who want to come here. There are so many children I have seen over my career and the time that I adopted that I wish I could just pick up and bring here. It’s a heartbreaking situation to see these children in need. But at the same time what is happening in our own country, on our own streets, is also heartbreaking. Yet all the emoting that we see on television is rarely directed toward those children, those veterans, those mentally challenged individuals, people with substance abuse problems, who are literally living in gutters in our finest cities.

We should try to help people who are in need across the globe with the understanding that we have an enormous amount in our country that we have left unattended to. So the old saying: Charity begins at home. I think we should remember that — as we also try to give assistance to those who truly have proven themselves to be eligible under current law for U.S. refugee status.

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You’ve endorsed covid-19 treatments that have been found ineffective, if not dangerous: hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, a cattle dewormer. Why don’t you just tell people to do the thing that works and get the vaccine?

Well, what I think is best is to let people make their own personal medical decisions, which I thought that liberals used to be in favor of. What I find to be very disheartening is when the medical community, like the culture at large, seeks to silence physicians, scientists who dare question the medical consensus, because, just like the scientific consensus, the medical consensus is evolving. It changes.

I’m not anti-vaccine. Never had been. I’ve said multiple times that the vaccine clearly has benefits for vulnerable populations, immunocompromised individuals. What I’m against is vaccine mandates and telling people who are healthy young individuals that if you don’t do this, you can’t play sports, you can’t get a job, you can’t get into a university.

Did you get the vaccination yourself, and why or why not?

If we’re in the position of an America where individuals have to reveal their personal medical intimacies, I think we’ve arrived at a very dangerous place.

I have three kids. I’m very protective of them. And I trust Americans who are given full information to make health-care decisions for themselves and their families. I know what I know about natural immunity. I know what I know about the effectiveness of the vaccine.

We’ve arrived at a very strange place in the United States of America where a disease that is survivable by more than 99 percent of the population now dictates whether you have full constitutional rights.

If you want the government out of people’s business, what about antiabortion laws?

The analogy is totally inapt because abortion involves the definite termination of another life, so it’s a conscious intent to end the life of another being. But if someone for personal reasons, or medical reasons, or religious reasons, or a cost-benefit analysis, decides not to get vaccinated, there is no intent to harm another individual. So the result is not certain death for another person.

So that’s the difference. It’s a pretty simple proposition. This whole analogy just explodes on itself. The whole my-body-myself argument doesn’t in any way hold up as an analogy.

Vilifying the non-vaccinated people, who are making their own determination, as selfish or stupid, or trying to isolate them, punish them, is totally counterproductive. It just makes people less trusting of the government. It works against the interest of the government to create this vaccinated caste system.

How many times have you met the former president?

I’ve known [Trump] almost 25 years. So I don’t know how many times. A lot.

Who do you think won the 2020 election?

I’ve always said that if you want to win an election, you have to win it on election night, okay? But look, I don’t pretend to know the intricacies of how every state counted mail-in ballots and how they were certified. I don’t. But I do know that when you’re running for president, you have to have these legal challenges ready to go. Much as Bush did in 2000.

The Trump folks wanted to exhaust every means. But at some point I think Joe Biden’s president.

What movie do you keep coming back to?

“Godfather.”

Just everything about it, from the way it’s directed to the way it was cast. We’re invested in each character. It’s always a great question: Are you more of a Michael Corleone or a Sonny Corleone? You don’t want to end up at that toll booth.

Richard Leiby is a magazine articles editor. The two interviews conducted for this article have been edited and condensed.

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