They thought they could play with matches and not get burned.
They thought if anyone did get hurt it would be the people they talk down to: their voters and viewers.
What was it? Private polling? Spiking Delta infection rates? Donor skittishness? What leaked census data might mean for the GOP’s 2022 vote margins? All of the above?
Whatever it was, a few Republicans and Fox News hosts as well as Newsmax have begun an abrupt about-face on the Covid vaccine. What started Monday morning with “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy urging viewers to get vaccinated (while Brian Kilmeade urged them to risk death, if that’s their choice) accelerated Monday night when Sean Hannity made a similar plea in prime time.
“Just like we’ve been saying, please take Covid seriously,” Hannity told viewers.
David Graham at The Atlantic observed, “‘Just like we’ve been saying’ is doing a lot of work.” Hannity and network have been vaccine skeptics at least since Joe Biden took office. The change of heart echoes the flip-flop Fox did on recognizing the pandemic in March 2020,
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy Tuesday morning published an op-ed applauding President Biden for doing a “good thing” in “embracing the Trump-backed vaccine.”
With conservative media currently under fire for pushing vaccine hesitancy amid a surge of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations among the unvaccinated, Ruddy—who claims to be a close friend of Donald Trump’s—explicitly declared that he and his conservative network are pro-vaccine.
“Six months into his administration, President Joe Biden should be applauded for making a huge dent in the COVID pandemic,” he wrote. “He inherited an effective vaccine from President Donald Trump, took it into his arms, and ran with it.”
By Tuesday evening, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was on message, too. Himself a polio survivor, McConnell urged “in the strongest possible manner” that “these shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible” or the country faces another fall like last year’s.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R) of Louisiana told reporters in April and again in May that he had not been vaccinated. “Soon,” he said. On Sunday, he received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The aggressiveness of the Delta variant made him reconsider.
“When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospital with delta variant have not been vaccinated. That’s another signal the vaccine works,” Scalise said. Politics had nothing to do with it.
What’s going on here? While the virus first hit blue states hard last year, suddenly it is the unvaccinated in red states being hit hardest. In Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas. In Missouri and Alabama. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps it dawned on the Murdochs that killing off their viewership was not a sustainable business model.
Former network executive Preston Padden earlier this month published a Daily Beast column calling the network “poison for America” for fueling vaccine hesitancy and disparaging mask-wearing.
Tucker Carlson has not read the memo. So, don’t be fooled, Aaron Rupar cautions at Vox. “Fox’s Covid-19 coverage is still a mess.”
The New York Times concurs:
Fox News has faced heavy criticism in recent days over its vaccine coverage, including a denunciation on the Senate floor and accusations of hypocrisy after a memo revealed that its own employees would be allowed to go maskless in the office if vaccinated. And with views on vaccines increasingly split along partisan lines, some leading Republicans have grown alarmed at the deadly toll of the virus in conservative states and districts.
The Biden administration, which has criticized the spread of Covid-related misinformation, has focused on Fox News’s coverage, given the channel’s influence with conservative viewers who have expressed skepticism about vaccines. The White House organized an informational briefing for Fox News producers and journalists this spring with several officials who are helping with the coronavirus response.
The administration has held similar discussions with other networks. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that her team recognized “the importance of reaching Fox’s audience about the Covid-19 vaccines and their benefits.” She added: “We don’t see vaccines as a political issue. It’s an issue about keeping Americans safe.”
Much of the sycophancy on the right has been, as Paul Krugman detailed, loyalty signaling. “In the context of dictatorial regimes,” he writes, “signaling typically involves making absurd claims on behalf of the Leader and his agenda, often including ‘nauseating displays of loyalty.’”
There has been plenty of that, to be sure, and results have been deadly.
Graham writes:
Meanwhile, the most trusted messenger of all for many on the right remains mostly on the sidelines. Trump has sought to claim credit for the development of the vaccines, but has not devoted the energy to boosting them that he has to (for example) spreading disinformation about the 2020 election. And though the former president did get vaccinated, he declined to take his shot publicly, a gesture that experts thought could have instilled faith among his supporters.
Now that the Delta variant is hitting red states and Fox viewers hard, it is finally dawning on some of his most prominent devotees that maybe, just maybe, they ought to un-catapult the propaganda.
They thought they could play with matches and not get burned. They thought if anyone did get hurt it would be the people they talk down to: their own viewers and voters (or their political adversaries). Finally, reality is sinking in. Somewhat.
Update: Had Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy reverse in 4th para. Fixed. (h/t ET)