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- Conservative radio host Dan Bongino is objecting to a vaccine mandate imposed by Cumulus Media, the owner of the radio network which hosts his talk show.
- Cumulus Media requested that employees be inoculated against COVID-19 before returning to work.
- Bongino, who is vaccinated, is pushing back against this vaccine mandate and threatening to quit.
Conservative pundit Dan Bongino is threatening to quit his talk show to protest the vaccine mandate imposed by Cumulus Media, the owner of the radio network that his program airs on.
Bongino said during an episode of "The Dan Bongino Show" that he was standing up to Cumulus Media's vaccine mandate.
"You can have me, or you can have the (vaccine) mandate. But you can't have both of us," Bongino said on his show, which airs on Cumulus' network of radio stations.
Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and congressional candidate, is one of the most prominent and powerful right-wing commentators today. This March, he took over conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh's radio slot, and featured former President Donald Trump on the first episode of his show.
"There is a very real thing called natural immunity. There's an even realer thing called freedom and liberty. This is a constitutional republic. People have the right to make their own medical decisions and the company has the right to do what it wants as well," Bongino said.
"But if a company is going to make political decisions - and I believe this was a political decision, I don't believe this is based in any science - I could argue it all day. They should at least recognize that the company is earning a lot of money off people who have the opposite political persuasion," he added.
Cumulus Media's announced on August 12 that its employees need to be vaccinated before their October 11 return-to-work date.
"Put simply, we believe that Force Cumulus is at our best when we're working together in offices," Cumulus Media CEO Mary Berner wrote in the statement, which was published by Inside Radio. "To do that as safely as we reasonably can, we're requiring that everyone be vaccinated except those legally excepted. It would neither be fair nor do we have the bandwidth to make exceptions based on individual preferences."
A few radio personalities at Cumulus-linked radio stations have left their positions because they have not been vaccinated, per reporting from Inside Radio.
However, if Bongino joins these radio show hosts in leaving the network, it will not be because he hasn't received the vaccine. According to The Bongino Report, the Twitter account linked to Bongino's news aggregation website, Bongino himself is vaccinated.
"He is not resisting the vaccine mandate for himself but for other employees who don't have a platform to fight back as they risk unemployment if they don't comply," read a tweet posted by the account on October 18.
Cumulus did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider regarding Bongino's current status as a host on its network.