White House, Lib Media, RINOs Aim Their Guns at GOP Opponents of Door-to-Door Vaccine Push
Don’t like President Joe Biden’s administration deputizing “trusted messengers” to go door-to-door and preach to the unvaccinated to get the COVID jab? The White House wants you to know you’re “feeding misinformation.”
And, if you’re a politician looking askance at the proposal, you’re “literally killing people.”
Yes, Democrats — and the odd Republican, albeit one in name only — are beginning the push back against those who would push back at a divisive and unhelpful plan to boost the numbers of the vaccinated by having volunteers act as traveling salespeople for the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots.
The Biden administration first announced the plan last week.
“Now we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people” vaccinated, the president said Tuesday, according to a White House transcript.
Also on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki mentioned the door-to-door push while talking with reporters about the possibility of new lockdowns and other COVID restrictions during a media briefing.
“Well, the states are going to have to make evaluations and local communities are going to have to make evaluations about what’s in their interests,” Psaki said.
“And, as you know, there are much higher rates of vaccinations in some parts of the country over others, and we certainly support their decisions to implement any measures that they think will help their community [be] safe,” she continued, adding that Biden wanted a “targeted, community-by-community, door-to-door outreach to get remaining Americans vaccinated by ensuring they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is.”
It didn’t take long for Republicans to push back on this, and for good reason.
“I have directed our health department to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!” Missouri Gov. Mike Parson tweeted Wednesday.
I have directed our health department to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!
— Governor Mike Parson (@GovParsonMO) July 8, 2021
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, meanwhile, wondered whether this meant government agents would be “knocking on your door to see if you own a gun” next.
The Biden Administration wants to knock on your door to see if you’re vaccinated.
What’s next? Knocking on your door to see if you own a gun?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 8, 2021
However, the biggest White House push-back came when South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a vocal Biden critic, wanted to block the door-to-door efforts of the administration in his state, according to The Associated Press.
In a letter to his state’s health department, McMaster requested it block state and local groups from “the use of the Biden Administration’s ‘targeted’ ‘door to door’ tactics.”
“A South Carolinian’s decision to get vaccinated is a personal one for them to make and not the government’s,” McMaster wrote, according to the AP.
“Enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring anyone to take the vaccine is a bad policy which will deteriorate the public’s trust and confidence in the State’s vaccination efforts.”
On Friday, Psaki insinuated McMaster was “literally killing people.”
“The failure to provide accurate public health information, including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country, including South Carolina, is literally killing people, so maybe they should consider that,” Psaki said during a media briefing Friday.
Psaki: The failure to provide accurate public health information including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country including South Carolina is literally killing people so maybe they should consider that… pic.twitter.com/tXdwNurZaP
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 9, 2021
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, meanwhile, told CNN it was “absolutely the government’s business” who was vaccinated and who wasn’t.
“The federal government has had to spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic, so it is absolutely the government’s business,” Becerra told CNN on Thursday.
“It is the taxpayer’s business if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy. And so, it is our business to try to make sure Americans can prosper, Americans can freely associate, and knocking on a door has never been against the law.”
Whether or not it’s against the law isn’t quite the issue, however. It’s whether or not having surrogates of the federal government peddling the vaccine as if they’re Boy Scouts selling candy bars comes across as invasive, divisive and counterproductive.
You can do anything door-to-door, but you would think there would be enough self-awareness on the administration’s part to realize why Amway and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have branding issues.
But when that fails, feel free to fall back on the old “misinformation” feint. White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients certainly did.
“For those individuals, organizations that are feeding misinformation and trying to mischaracterize this type of trusted-messenger work, I believe you are doing a disservice to the country and to the doctors, the faith leaders, community leaders and others who are working to get people vaccinated, save lives and help end this pandemic,” Zients said.
That kind of rhetoric may not win the vaccine-reticent over, but the media needed little wooing to swoon over the Biden administration’s offensive.
“For the usually reserved Biden White House, which has long harbored private frustrations about some states’ laggard vaccination programs but refused to condemn them publicly for fear of playing up political divides in public health, it was a bridge too far,” the AP claimed regarding states’ push-back against the nascent door-to-door initiative.
Here was ABC News on Friday: “President Joe Biden’s push to enlist volunteers, including local doctors and pastors, to go ‘literally knocking on doors’ to encourage vaccinations in some states sparked an outcry this week among conservatives, who mischaracterized the effort as the deployment of government agents to strong-arm reluctant Americans.”
However, the White House hadn’t made any particularly strenuous effort to characterize the vaccine drive in enough detail for anyone to have “mischaracterized” it.
Per the AP’s fawning report on Thursday, Psaki has “rebutted some allegations about the door-knocking program.”
“They are not members of the government. They are not federal government employees,” she said. “They are volunteers. They are clergy. They are trusted voices in communities who are playing this role and door knocking.”
By that time, though, it was clear this was a bad idea no matter who was doing it or how much the administration or the media tried to apply a fresh coat of lipstick to the pig.
But if all else fails, let Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger — the biggest RINO in Congress who’s not named Liz Cheney — try to convince that you’re “pretending this is a real threat” if you have reservations about the government sending trusted voices in communities to knock at your door and ask why you haven’t gotten a jab.
“Republican Outrage of the week- ‘door to door’ vaccines. OH NO,” Kinzinger tweeted Saturday.
“All these ‘tough guy’ politicians pretending this is a real threat, all do door to door campaigning. It’s so nice to live so comfortably that this is what consumes us and not real problems. Get vaccinated.”
Republican Outrage of the week- “door to door” vaccines. OH NO. All these “tough guy” politicians pretending this is a real threat, all do door to door campaigning. It’s so nice to live so comfortably that this is what consumes us and not real problems. Get vaccinated
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) July 10, 2021
Kinzinger, who attracted obsequious media coverage after he voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump earlier this year over the Capitol incursion, is apparently feeling the sting of the fading spotlight. I suppose that’ll give it a little juice.
It’s not “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “mischaracterization,” “literally killing people” or even figuratively killing people if you reject the door-to-door model. It’s not “absolutely the government’s business” whether you’re vaccinated and you’re not being a “tough guy” politician if you question the logic of this plan.
Contrary to the AP’s claims, the Biden White House is not “usually reserved,” nor has it “refused to condemn [Republicans] publicly for fear of playing up political divides in public health.” (Remember “Neanderthal thinking?”)
Most conservatives who have expressed skepticism haven’t “mischaracterized the effort as the deployment of government agents to strong-arm reluctant Americans.”
But don’t expect this to stop. The rhetorical guns in the White House, the mainstream media and among turncoat Republicans have long been aimed at the GOP over the Biden administration’s desire to micromanage COVID policy — and they’re not going to stop shooting now that they’ve started firing.
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