A vile new Trump-GOP claim about vaccines suggests trouble ahead

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
Trump is now telling his voters that distrusting the feds on the vaccine is a way to show fealty to his big lie about 2020. And GOP leaders will be fine with it. Time to reckon with the sheer malevolence and deliberate sabotage on display here. My latest:

Opinion | A vile new Trump-GOP claim about vaccines suggests trouble ahead
Distrusting vaccines has now become an explicit test of loyalty to Trump.
washingtonpost.com
7:50 AM · Jul 19, 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/19/vile-new-trump-gop-claim-about-vaccines-suggests-trouble-ahead/

It was only a matter of time until Donald Trump converted the debate over covid-19 vaccines into an occasion for his supporters to show their loyalty to him — and even worse, to the “big lie” that his 2020 loss was illegitimate.

“People are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don’t trust his Administration,” the former president said in a statement Sunday, referring to President Biden. “They don’t trust the Election results, and they certainly don’t trust the Fake News.”

There you have it: Trump is telling his supporters that they are correct not to trust the federal government on vaccines, because this sentiment should flow naturally from their suspicion that the election was stolen from him. Expressing the former has been magically transformed into a way to show fealty to the latter.

This suggests the anti-vaccine mania on the right may only get worse, at exactly the moment that we need it to get better. This vile new Trump claim hints at how this is likely to happen, with the complicity of even relatively responsible Republicans.

*snip*

[PSPS]

1. This is hardly "new." trump made everyhing covid part of the "culture wars" in 2019.

[Joinfortmill]

2. To my mind, this is killing people.

[lark]

3. Why, oh why oh why is this destructomatic automaton still moving around?

Why has karma failed us so badly?

[Phoenix61]

15. I know. One would think he has over stayed his

welcome by quite a bit but it seems not.

[RKP5637]

4. Major assholes like the EX-president just go on and on, non-stop. n/t

[Andy823]

5. Is he so stupid

he doesn't realize the people who are going to die the most, will be his voters?

[Dave says]

6. Well, in the end, there are less Republican voters. That's a plus...

[TrogL]

32. The problem is they'll be clogging up hospitals

...depriving other people of needed hospital beds.

[struggle4progress]

7. Russian-backed outlets spread vaccine disinformation

MARCH 7, 20217:39 PM
UPDATED 4 MONTHS AGO
By Simon Lewis

... three online publications directed by Russia’s intelligence services .. are seeking to undermine COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna, a State Department spokeswoman said ...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-covid-disinformation/u-s-says-russian-backed-outlets-spread-covid-19-vaccine-disinformation-idUSKBN2B0016

[markie]

8. something must be done...

he is dangerous, he is killing people and we (collectively) do nothing...

I have no answer, but there must be one

[struggle4progress]

9. Russia's Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

MARCH 29, 2021
HENRY MILLER

... anti-vaccine sentiment is the product of what can only be described as an industry whose principal protagonists are an organized group of professional propagandists. As recently reported in the science journal Nature, they are people “running multi-million-dollar organizations, incorporated mainly in the USA, with as many as 60 staff each.”

Moreover, the source of much of the misinformation about vaccines comes from an unobvious source: the Russian government’s propaganda apparatus, which cultivates and exploits foreign anti-vaccine “useful idiots,” causing palpable harm to Americans and citizens of other Western countries ...

https://medecon.org/russias-anti-vaccine-propaganda-is-tantamount-to-a-declaration-of-war/

[struggle4progress]

10. Russian Network Behind Disinformation Drive

May 27, 2021 17:16 GMT
By Mark Krutov
Sergei Dobrynin
Mike Eckel
Carl Schreck

A network of Russian marketing companies known for selling dubious nutritional supplements and pushing malware is behind a disinformation campaign to denigrate Western coronavirus vaccines, according to a new RFE/RL investigation.

The revelations, which lead to a Moscow-based businesswoman active in pro-Kremlin political circles, add new insight into the campaign that targeted social-media influencers in France and Germany, among other countries, and reportedly attracted the attention of French intelligence agencies.

The woman, Yulia Serebryanskaya, is a veteran of political campaigns and event planning for the ruling United Russia party, and briefly ran as an independent for election in the Moscow city elections in 2019.

She also heads an organization called Russian Initiative, which describes itself as a "worldwide union of Russian speakers" that "helps people carry on our culture and adequately represent our traditions, our social achievements, rather than tolerate a distorted idea of the Motherland, wherever they are" ...

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-pfizer-covid-disinformation-serebryanskaya-murky-vaccine-influencers/31277170.html

[struggle4progress]

11. EU report takes aim at vaccine fake news

By LORNE COOK
April 28, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — Russia has launched a major campaign using ministries, companies and pro-Kremlin media to promote the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and spread fake news that the West and the European Union are trying to undermine the shot, an EU agency said in a report Wednesday.

The report was compiled by the strategic communications branch of the EU’s European External Action Service, or EEAS, which is essentially the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministry. It said that part of the campaign is to sow distrust in the European Medicines Agency ...

https://apnews.com/article/european-union-russia-europe-fake-news-coronavirus-d12316c1e6c21fe2f1a450e8f387dbac

[karynnj]

12. To be fair, Trump's quote says PEOPLE do not trust the Biden administration, the election results

And the media. I would assume he is OK with that, but he does not say they are correct.

Trump did question the virus itself. However, his SUPPORTERS KNOW he got it, was treated with the best medication around and they might knowheand his family were privately vaccinated. He and his allies have already done so much fear mongering, I am not sure any additional stuff can have a major impact.

It is sad reading that even people in the hospital in places like AR are still saying it was a good decision not to get vaccinated. How do you deal with that?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. non-firewalled reporting of this:

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-s-rhetoric-vaccines-takes-dramatic-turn-worse-n1274359

https://www.wlfi.com/content/national/574863702.html?ref=702

[Nevilledog]

16. TY

[spanone]

14. someone arrest this mother

fucker

[LonePirate]

17. He was near death himself and has since been vaccinated but he preaches anti-vax bs.

We are so fucked as a country.

[ZonkerHarris]

18. If they want to die With Trumps help Then so be it

[BGBD]

19. I'm not sure how

Killing your voters is a strong electoral strategy...but ok.


And let's be clear....another wave of covid is going to be highly concentrated in Trump voters, especially when it comes to severe disease and death

[keithbvadu2]

20. Yet, Dotard got the vaccine.

[tanyev]

21. ETTD.

[moondust]

22. Jim Jones returns.

Congresswoman and Jonestown survivor Jackie Speier: ‘Trump is a political cult leader'

[Vinca]

23. Killing off his own voters . . . a brilliant idea like you've never seen before.

[Maru Kitteh]

24. Free speech is costing us dearly. nt

[rickyhall]

25. If they charge the fat bastard with terrorism they can finally shut him up.

The Fed (FBI) defines terrorism as "the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual" SNIP "against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."

https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005

Trump's violence is Covid. From this point of view, he is a terrorist along with the rest of his terrorist organization, the GOP.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

26. From the Hoarse Whisperer

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

27. Trump's rhetoric on vaccines takes a dramatic turn for the worse

This is scary. TFG wants his supporters to die in order show that they believe the Big Lie about election results.

Link to tweet

Four months later, the Republican's message has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Trump issued this written statement yesterday:

"Joe Biden kept talking about how good of a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or, quite simply, the Trump Administration. He's not doing well at all. He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth."

....In July, Trump's new message implicitly suggests that only those who believe President Biden, election results, and independent news organizations are getting the shots.

As infection numbers inch higher, this is plainly dangerous. The more vaccinations are politicized, the more it undermines public health.

Also note the degree to which Trump is blaming Biden for far-right vaccine opponents' refusals. The rhetoric introduces the possibility of a twisted incentive: Those who want to keep the Democratic White House "behind schedule" suddenly have another reason to avoid vaccinations.

[Nevilledog]

28. "Prove you'd die for me!"

[Crunchy Frog]

29. His base didn't come through for him sufficiently, so now they must be punished.

At least that's my best guess as to his mindset.

[Johnny2X2X]

30. Fun with numbers

First, 56% have 1 dose, 18% of the country is 12 an under and can't get a dose, but if 56% of those also get it, that gets us to 66%. I think business and schools are going to be able to enforce vaccine mandates, that's already held up in court in the past. Maybe that gets us to another 5-10%. So I think 70-75% vaccinated is doable.

Now say we get to 75%, that's 85 million Americans not vaccinated. Now about 1/3 have already had Covid. So that leaves roughly 18% of the country vulnerable. These 18% will be heavily concentrated in red states and counties. There's some states that may get to 90% vaccinated, they'll have stamped it out in those states. So the carnage will be mostly in the already poorest states.

Now think of this, Florida is still a swing state. The carnage could be county by county there, with bluer counties not suffering nearly as much as the red counties. The outbreak could be severe in deep red counties there and the deaths could be in the several tens of thousands just for Florida the next several months. The people who die from this point forward are going to be almost exclusively Trump voters. Now I do not want these people to die, but in a close election, these dead Trump voters could swing Florida back to blue. 40,000 less Republican voters for the next statewide or national election could absolutely make a difference.

[DemocraticPatriot]

31. Well, maybe they are all a little suicidal over the loss of their fuhrer...

Nature will take its course.