Former White House Press Secretary and now Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ recent editorial urging red state Americans and her fellow conservatives to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is self-serving and scarcely has a passing acquaintance with the truth.
Sanders dubiously claimed Dr. Fauci and other public health officials “misjudged the Trump vaccine plan, which rolled out just as safely, quickly, and effectively as the Trump administration promised.” She further claimed “no one did more to undercut public confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
No serious person would believe such balderdash any more than the rubbish made from whole cloth by Trump and his acolytes that he won last November’s elections despite 60 plus court cases ruling otherwise.
It wasn’t that Biden and Harris didn’t trust vaccines, it’s that they didn’t trust Trump and they made the distinction explicitly. On September 16, 2020, Biden said, “I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump and at this moment, the American people can’t, either.” During the lone VP debate on October 7, 2020, Harris echoed Biden’s sentiments. “If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely, said Harris, “But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it. I’m not taking it.”
Biden and Harris’ distrust of Trump is understandable when we remember that it was Trump who was recommending that Americans take hydroxychloroquine and inject ourselves with bleach. Let us also remember that Trump also claimed at a rally in Ohio on September 22, 2020 that COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody.” This was the same day the U.S. surpassed 200,000 deaths. When the U.S. surpassed 350,000 deaths on January 3, 2021, Trump claimed the numbers were “exaggerated.” Sixteen days later, the death toll hit 400,000. It was the day before Trump left office but it would be left to Biden and Harris to mourn the dead.
With all of this mind, here was the passage in Sanders’ op-ed which struck me the most:
If President Biden, Vice President Harris, and others on the left truly care about increasing the vaccination rate and saving lives, they should admit they were wrong to cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed and give President Trump and his team the credit they are due for the development of a safe and effective vaccine in record time.
Based on the advice of my doctor, I determined that the benefits of getting vaccinated outweighed any potential risks.
I was also reassured after President Trump and his family were vaccinated. If getting vaccinated was safe enough for them, I felt it was safe enough for me.
For all of Sanders’ maligning of President Biden, Vice-President Harris and Dr. Fauci, all three of them saw fit to get their COVID vaccines on live television. Even former Vice-President Mike Pence got his on live TV. You know the guy Trump supporters wanted to hang on January 6th.
As for former President Trump received his COVID vaccine along with former First Lady in January shortly before leaving office. But this would be witnessed by the public. Indeed, the very fact that Trump received the vaccine was not revealed until March 1stst.
Mind you, Sanders tells us that she was reassured once she learned that Trump had received the vaccine. Wouldn’t have it been more reassuring for Trump supporters had he saw fit to be vaccinated live and in person? In which case, it might very well have been unnecessary for Sanders to write her editorial in the first place.
For Trump to get vaccinated privately and secretly is a rather curious move for a fellow who likes to put his name to everything from golf courses, hotels, steaks and universities. If it truly was the “Trump vaccine”, the former President would have made a show of it. Trump could have been vaccinated at one of his rallies.
Although Trump has urged people to get vaccinated since leaving office he does not do so with the same kind of fervor and passion when he falsely claims he won the election. Engaging in such demagoguery blunts whatever good might have been done in telling his supporters to get vaccinated. Whatever encouragement Trump might offer with regard to vaccination, he has done nothing to discourage the disinformation they have been told about vaccines and everything else about COVID-19. While Trump took credit for producing vaccines at CPAC, audience members wildly cheered an anti-vaxxer who spoke about falling short of the Biden Administration's vaccination goals. Then again how could Trump discourage disinformation? After all, it was Trump who was the Commander-in-Chief of disinformation in the first place.
One could make the case that Sarah Huckabee Sanders ought to be praised for urging red state Americans and her fellow conservatives to get vaccinated against COVID-19 especially if her intervention should result in an increase in vaccinations among that population.
But Sanders’ op-ed isn’t about getting more Americans vaccinated, it’s about heaping praise on Donald Trump that he doesn’t deserve.
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