In the final months of Donald Trump’s tenure in office, several of the then president’s top advisers were monitoring a growing concern: the hesitation of the COVID-19 vaccine, especially among Republicans and Trump supporters, would pose a major problem for the United States embarked on. in 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 government officials about this specific issue of MAGA during his final weeks as leader of the free world. But in the two months since President Joe Biden took over the White House, research shows that aversion to new coronavirus vaccines remains markedly greater among Trump fans and Republican Party voters than among Biden liberals and supporters. This reality generated great concern among authorities and public health experts and left some friends and allies of the former president frustrated that Trump, from his new home in Florida, was not doing more to reach his base and fight the problem.
“I practically begged him to go there constantly [during his post-presidency] and making videos calling on your supporters who are hesitant to take your photos, ”said a person close to Trump. “The last time I checked in, I hadn’t heard of any positive moves in that direction.”
In a small number of public appearances and TV interviews recently, the ex-president has encouraged – sometimes as mere asides – his true believers to be vaccinated, but has yet to embark on anything close to a vigorous campaign to leverage his big megaphone on the topic . Furthermore, it has not been publicly revealed that he and then-First Lady Melania Trump were vaccinated until almost a month and a half after he ceased to be president.
Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign advisor who served as assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Daily Beast that in September, just before he was diagnosed with cancer and left the government, he too talked to the president about anti-vaccine sentiment quickly emerging among MAGA’s faithful.
“Donald Trump and I talked about broader issues, and I mentioned that briefly,” he said. “It was a superficial conversation in the Oval Office in September, between meetings, and I mentioned how hesitating the vaccine would likely be a big problem, especially among Republicans and Trump supporters. And he said, ‘Yes, I understand, and that is a problem.’ I was told that there were other conversations about it after I left, and that the conversations with the president continued … We started to get more and more suspicious of [anti-vaccine sentiment on the right] when I left. We were talking at HHS in August, saying it was ironic that the most hesitant among us were our friends, our allies. And we still face this issue. “
In November, Trump’s focus had shifted to a large extent – not for his management of the global pandemic that torpedoed the U.S. economy and left hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, but for his judicial and republican battles and anti-democratic crusade to overthrow the clear victory of Biden in the 2020 presidential contest.
In the weeks following Biden’s inauguration, Trump only sporadically called on his supporters to get the COVID vaccines, including in his keynote address during last month’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference, and has yet to put together anything that looks like a campaign or sustained effort. Last week, Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, had to partially close due to a new coronavirus outbreak.
Recent research has consistently found that Trump fans and Republican men are some of the demographics most likely to decline, or be skeptical about getting a coronavirus vaccine.
Since settling in his post-presidency, Trump has sometimes casually discussed with certain confidants the prospect of starring in his own videos or ads to promote vaccines and also to tout the successes of his government’s Operation Warp Speed, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations. However, when asked if any of these videos had ever been produced, a Trump adviser said last week that there was “nothing scheduled” at the moment in terms of launch.
Earlier this month, former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter starred in a public service announcement aimed at convincing more Americans to get vaccinated against the virus. Trump, the two sources relayed, said in private that he does not want to star in PSAs with the other former presidents, most of whom he openly despises.
And for some prominent Trump allies, the 45th US president’s latest pleas just weren’t right. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, intermittent Trump adviser who also served as co-chairman of the Trump reelection campaign in Minnesota, said in a recent interview that the former CPAC president’s speech didn’t beg fans to get vaccinated (although he did been), and added that his next planned social media site will be a “free speech” haven that will allow users to post as much anti-vaccine content as they want, for example. “I will never accept … and it is against my religion,” Lindell insisted.
This type of conversation between MAGA megafans sounds abundantly familiar to other former Trump lieutenants, some of whom are in confrontation with other supporters of the former president who refuse to be vaccinated during the ongoing effort of the Biden and local administration and state governments. Caputo said that in his time outside the government and battling cancer, he prioritized prioritizing reaching as many Trump supporters online and in his community as possible to try to convince them to get the vaccines.
“I’ve been on Facebook, I’ve participated in Republican committee meetings, I’ve participated in Zoom meetings, there’s a motorcyclists meeting place near me called Kipp’s that has life-size cutouts of President Trump and Melania, where you can take a photo there— they are Johnny Cash and Donald Trump memorabilia. I would go there and talk to people about it, ”he said. “Some of my closest friends are anti-vaccines or anti-masks, or even COVID deniers who believe it is just like the flu. One of my friends is anti-mask and believes that COVID was a plot to overthrow Donald Trump – now he has COVID. And these are the people I speak to. “
Asked what his ex-boss could be doing now to get more Republicans to embark on the COVID-19 vaccination, Caputo replied: “In my opinion, the ex-president could run a PSA campaign with Melania Trump. And national television networks need to broadcast that now, in their prime-time programming. “
For now, Trump has remained almost entirely absent on the subject. And when he raised his head publicly to urge his anti-vaccine followers to change their minds, he sometimes swerved in the direction of the ism on both sides.
“I would and would recommend it to many people who do not want to receive it. And a lot of those people voted for me, frankly, ”Trump said during a telephone interview with Fox News earlier this month. “But, you know, again, we have our freedoms and we have to live for it, and I agree with that too,” continued the former president, before adding: “But it is a great vaccine, it is a safe vaccine, and it works. “