Gov. Hogan Hammers GOP Mask Bans, Welcomes Afghani Refugees

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Gov. Larry Hogan had some national TV time Tuesday morning to criticize Republican governors who have banned mask mandates, especially by schools, and to hammer President Joe Biden's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Maryland's governor spoke on "CBS This Morning" to discuss Maryland’s high COVID-19 vaccination numbers, along with the state’s offer to resettle Afghan interpreters who worked with American forces overseas.

He touted the state's high rate of COVID vaccinations, which is 80.1 percent for one dose as of Tuesday, and 95 percent of Maryland's vulnerable population has been vaccinated. Hogan noted that on Aug. 16 he received a booster shot because he is a cancer survivor.

On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for anyone age 16 and older. Hogan said that takes the argument away for those who haven’t been vaccinated against the virus, which is surging nationwide because of the delta variant.

"Approving one vaccine is great, but getting final approval on the other two would be (great)," he told CBS.

When anchor Gayle King asked Hogan if he was surprised former President Donald Trump was booed recently when he urged an Alabama crowd to get vaccinated, the governor said no.

"It didn’t really surprise me because we’ve seen a lot of this anger and frustration out there. There’s been a lot of miscommunication for 18 months, the disinformation is very prevalent on social media.”

Hogan's office released excerpts from the interview.

On GOP Governors Blocking Mask Mandates:

“Not only are they against it, but they’re mandating against it. There are Republican governors who are saying they’re all about freedom, and yet they’re taking away the freedom of local school systems and in some cases businesses to make those decisions for themselves," Hogan said.

“We’ve tried to find the right balance, we’ve been encouraging mask usage. We left it up to the duly elected school boards in our state — that’s who has the power to make those decisions. About two-thirds of our school systems voted to wear masks, others decided not to. But to mandate that they have to or mandate that they cannot doesn’t make sense to me.

“I think it’s a basic conservative Republican principle to let local decision makers make decisions.”

On Special Immigrant Visas For Afghanis:

“These are our allies that worked side-by-side with us, in some cases for 20 years, and we made a commitment to them," Hogan said. "We’ve got to get all of our Americans out of there and our allies as well. … We want to continue to try to help them relocate because we owe it to them. We made a commitment. We can’t let them down.”

On The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan:

“I think it was a mistake from the decision making, from the intelligence, from the execution, and from the communications standpoint. The White House seems to be trying to grapple with it, but it’s been done about the opposite of any way you should do it," the governor said.

“First of all, we shouldn’t have given up Bagram Air Base. We shouldn’t have telegraphed exactly what we were doing to the Taliban, we shouldn’t have made an agreement with them that allowed for a lot of this to happen, and we should’ve made sure we get our people out of there before we pulled out all of our troops.”

Related: Hogan Gets Booster Shot, Cheers FDA Approval Of Pfizer Vaccine