Dr. Scott Jensen spoke on vaccine mandates, civil disobedience and his fellow Minnesota Republicans in an interview with Alpha News Thursday.
Jensen is a medical doctor from Chaska who served in the Minnesota Senate from 2017 to 2021. He was propelled to national fame last year for his skepticism of Minnesota’s coronavirus response and remains in the spotlight because of his hesitancy with forcing COVID vaccines on people who may not be at risk of dying from the virus. Now, he’s running for governor on a conservative platform that features a measured approach to combating the pandemic.
Although many mainstream media outlets paint him as a controversial figure, Jensen upholds that all of his claims are based in scientific reality.
“My medical license has been investigated four times. Each time, the allegations have been dismissed,” he said. “I’ve been fact-checked by USA Today and found to be correct. I’ve been fact-checked by the Associated Press, Facebook, TikTok, Washington Post, New York Times.”
“I stood in the breach,” he added. “Did I flinch?”
In this spirit of standing in the breach, Jensen did not back down from his previous calls for civil disobedience — although he was keen to stress that he supports a strict policy of “nonviolence.”
He then illustrated how Minnesotans can practice peaceful resistance against President Joe Biden’s mandate that effectively requires most of the American workforce to take the COVID shot:
“We need to have business owners say ‘listen, the federal government is not constitutionally authorized to do what President Biden commanded me to do. I have an obligation to take care of these employees who may well have given me the best 20 or 30 years of their employment life … I will not and cannot do this to them … We’re going to have to push back.'”
He also took a moment to explain that while COVID policy is his main issue, he has experience dealing with other topics as well, citing his 30 years as a professor, extensive work on his local school board and intimate knowledge of health policy.
Finally, he addressed what appears to be a feud between himself and other prominent Minnesota Republicans.
Rep. Erik Mortensen recently authored an amendment aimed at reducing the state’s ability to exercise power in the name of COVID prevention. Action 4 Liberty has also published a pledge it wants people to sign in support of Mortensen’s proposal. They both have criticized Jensen for not signing the pledge and instead drafting his own legislation that is carried by several key Republicans.
However, Jensen said he doesn’t see as clear a divide among Minnesota Republicans as many onlookers and commentators do.
“I don’t really think there’s a rift. It’s more perceived than real,” he said. In his view, state Republicans should not “cannibalize one another, there’s no reason to.”
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Kyle Hooten
Kyle Hooten is Managing Editor of Alpha News. His coverage of Minneapolis has been featured on television shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and in print media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
