I think it’s obvious why Trump is afraid to encourage his followers to take the vaccine: he’s afraid of how he will look if they don’t do it.
I think people underestimate the degree to which Trump is led by his crazies as much as leading them. Remember, before he ran, he had Sam Nunberg listen to hours of talk radio so he could know what he was supposed to think about the vast range of issues about which he has no knowledge. He watches Fox, OAN and Newsmax today for the same purpose.
The Daily Beast reports that he just can’t bring himself to do it and his aides have begged him to. Maybe they should have a chat with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity instead:
In the final months of Donald Trump’s term in office, several of the then-president’s top advisers were monitoring a growing concern: that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, particularly among Republicans and Trump supporters, was going to pose a major problem as the United States embarked on its mission to vaccinate millions.
According to three people familiar with the matter, then-President Trump was repeatedly warned by some of his closest advisers and administration officials about this MAGA-specific issue during his closing weeks as leader of the free world. But in the two months since President Joe Biden took over at the White House, polls show that aversion to the new coronavirus vaccines remains markedly higher among Trump fans and GOP voters than it is among liberals and Biden supporters. That reality has stoked grave concern among public health officials and experts, and has left some of the ex-president’s friends and allies frustrated over the fact that Trump, from his new home in Florida, isn’t doing more to reach his base and combat the problem.ADVERTISEMENT
“I have practically begged him to get out there constantly [during his post-presidency] and make videos calling on his supporters who are hesitant to get their shots,” one person close to Trump said. “Last time I checked in, I hadn’t heard of any positive movement in that direction.”
In a small number of public appearances and TV interviews lately, the former president has encouraged—at times as mere asides—his true believers to get vaccinated, but has yet to embark on anything close to a vigorous campaign to leverage his sizable megaphone on the subject. Further, it was not publicly revealed he and then-first lady Melania Trump had been vaccinated until nearly a month and a half after he was no longer president.
Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser who served as the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Daily Beast that in September, shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer and departed the administration, he too talked to the president about the anti-vaccine sentiment rapidly emerging among the MAGA faithful.
“Donald Trump and I had a conversation about broader issues, and I mentioned it briefly,” he recounted. “It was a glancing conversation in the Oval Office in September, in between meetings, and I mentioned how vaccine hesitancy was likely going to be a big problem, especially among Republicans and Trump supporters. And he said, ‘Yes, I understand, and it’s a problem.’ I’ve been told there were other conversations on this after I left, and that the conversations with the president continued…We started getting more and more suspicious of [anti-vaccine sentiment on the right] as I left. We were talking amongst ourselves in HHS in August, saying that it was ironic that the most vaccine-hesitant among us were our friends, our allies. And we still face that question.”
By November, Trump’s focus had largely shifted—not to his management of the global pandemic that had torpedoed the U.S. economy and left hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, but to his and Republican’ court battles and anti-democratic crusade to overturn Biden’s clear victory in the 2020 presidential contest.
In the weeks following Biden’s inauguration, Trump has only sporadically called on his supporters to get their COVID vaccines, including at his headlining speech during last month’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference, and has yet to mount anything resembling a sustained campaign or effort. Just last week, Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, had to partially shut down due to a new coronavirus outbreak.
Recent polling has consistently found that Trump fans and Republican men are some of the demographics most likely to decline, or be skeptical of, getting a coronavirus vaccine.
Ever since settling into his post-presidency, Trump has at times casually discussed with certain confidants the prospect of starring in his own videos or ads to promote the vaccines, and also to tout the successes of his administration’s Operation Warp Speed, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations. However, when asked if any such videos had been produced yet, a Trump adviser said last week that there was “nothing scheduled” at the moment in terms of release.
He’s terrified of demonstrating to the world that he’s lost his power. So he will never do anything that goes against his cult’s attitudes and beliefs. He doesn’t need to. If attitudes change and they get vaccinated, he’ll just take credit for it and they will be happy to give it to him.