On May 28, in an interview with The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, Captain Tom Stewart USMC detailed the discrimination he and his colleagues have faced for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 saying that thousands of servicemen have been lost to mandates and that those who remain face rampant discrimination.
Stewart, who served for nearly 14 years, flew CH-53Es, heavy-lift helicopters, from April 2013 until December 2017 primarily in Hawaii. During this time he was also deployed to Darwin Australia and briefly toured Thailand.
“Following Hawaii, [he] served as a Deputy Air Officer for [the] 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade until June 2019 setting up refueling between French Mirages and Marine KC-130s along with supporting many more exercises all over the Middle East,” The Gateway Pundit reported. He also served as an instructor for three years.
Stewart, who refused a COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons, said pilots and other servicemen who sought religious exemptions to the vaccine had their lives “made a living hell” for adhering to their faith.
Initially a COVID-19 vaccine was optional for Stewart and his colleagues however, coercive policies were in place around leave that restricted how far away from operations servicemen were allowed to travel unvaccinated.
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Stewart said he was eventually told that, “You will be at this shot exercise, 10 September, or else you will not be flying anymore.”
“So it was take the shot or else for us, myself along with 12 other marines…” Stewart said.
We “all submitted religious accommodations, and after the religious accommodations were submitted we were removed from the training and removed from the flight schedule,” he said
“I was basically sent down to do staff work and other janitorial duties at the group level.”
Stewart detailed the experience of a fellow airman who he described as a “sharp guy” who is being prosecuted for refusing to be vaccinated. He is being prosecuted under the Universal Code of Military Justice for refusing a vaccine and stands to be discharged from service and even forced to repay scholarships received for his training.
“They are going to make him pay back his time at the naval academy, after he put all this time in and he too will not bend on this either,” Stewart said.
Stewart was threatened with an Article 92, “failure to obey a lawful order from the secretary of defense,” and if charged, Stewart could face a court-martial.
Thousands impacted
“We do have some real fighter pilots out there strapping into F-18s and F-35s that are much needed,” Stewart said, adding that, “they are getting ready to get canned from the service.”
Stewart knows of two fighter pilots as well as the first female F35 pilot who “will be leaving the service shortly as a result of this thing and not complying with this mandate either.”
When asked how much money was invested in his training Stewart replied, “The figure I am going to track, at least on the jet side, is at least $9-million dollars; helicopter side I’ve been told $1.8 million….so it’s a lot of money and it’s a lot of money the government is going to lose on the pilot side…if they continue with this mandate, if they continue to press this.”
In the interview, Hoft inquired as to just how many servicemen have refused the vaccine saying that the mainstream media has “downplayed” the number of pilots who have refused a COVID-19 vaccine to which Stewart replied, “there’s thousands of us.”
Stewart says that 2285 Marines have failed to comply with “this unlawful order.”
“And they are going to lose a lot more it sounds like,” Hoft said to which Stewart replied, “that’s correct…it is not helping our cause to fight and win wars long-term.”
When asked whether he believes in the science used to enforced the mandates Stewart said, “I don’t really buy the science with it..I had four people close to me, one of which is dead, one of which, literally a healthy guy…had a bad stroke…and bell’s palsy so I do not want to go get in an aircraft and end up like him,” adding that, “I don’t think it’s very good science, it’s terrible science and to me it’s more like genocide right now than it is a science.”
Stewart will officially no longer being serving with the United States military as of July 1, 2022.
