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WASHINGTON Two senators working on an overhaul of the little-known law that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election pledged on Sunday that their legislation would pass the Senate, saying that recent revelations about the plot made their work even more important.

In a joint interview on CNNs State of the Union, Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said their efforts to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 were gaining broader support in the Senate, with as many as 20 senators taking part in the discussions.

Absolutely, it will pass, Mr. Manchin said of an overhaul of the law, which dictates how Congress formalizes elections.

He said efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to exploit ambiguity in the law were what caused the insurrection the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. That misreading of the statute led to a plan by Mr. Trump and his allies to amass a crowd outside the Capitol to try to pressure Congress and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over Congresss official count of electoral votes, to overturn the results of the election.

Ms. Murkowski said the rewrite could be expanded to include other protections for democracy, such as a crackdown on threats and harassment against election workers.

We want to make sure that if you are going to be an election worker, Ms. Murkowski said, you dont feel intimidated or threatened or harassed.

A bipartisan group of at least 15 senators which includes Mr. Manchin and Ms. Murkowski and is led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine recently began discussions with another group that features top Democrats who have studied the issue for months. That group includes Senator Angus King, independent of Maine; Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota; and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.

Mr. Kings group last week released draft legislative text for a rewrite of the Electoral Count Act that would address deficiencies exposed by Mr. Trumps plan. The bill would clarify that the vice president has no power to reject a states electors and ensure that state legislatures cannot appoint electors after Election Day in an effort to overturn their states election results.

It would also give states additional time to complete legitimate recounts and litigation; provide limited judicial review to ensure that the electors appointed by a state reflect the popular vote results in the state; enumerate specific and narrow grounds for objections to electors or electoral votes; raise the thresholds for Congress to consider objections; and make it harder to sustain objections without broad support by both chambers of Congress.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. King called his groups draft very nonpartisan and said it included the input of conservative and liberal legal scholars.

Hopefully we can join forces and get a good bill, Mr. King said of Ms. Collinss group.

The latest push to clarify the law follows a series of revelations about a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election, including the surfacing of memos that show the roots of the attempts to use so-called alternate electors to keep Mr. Trump in power and the former presidents exploration of proposals to seize voting machines.

On Friday, Mr. Pence offered his most forceful rebuke of Mr. Trumps plan, saying the former president was wrong to insist that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to overturn the results of the election. Those comments came on the same day the Republican National Committee voted to censure two members of the party, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, in a resolution that described the events of Jan. 6 as legitimate political discourse.

Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger are the only Republican members of the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.

The resolution drew criticism from some congressional Republicans on Sunday.

Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said on ABCs This Week that he did not agree with that statement if its applying to those who committed criminal offenses and violence to overtake our shrine of democracy.

In an interview on NBCs Meet the Press, Marc Short, Mr. Pences former chief of staff, said that from my front-row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse.

Mr. Short blamed Mr. Trumps push to overturn the election on many bad advisers who were basically snake-oil salesmen, giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do.

He described being taken to a secure room in the Capitol with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the building, some chanting, Hang Mike Pence. He said Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence did not talk that day.

Mr. Short and another top Pence aide, Greg Jacob, recently testified before the committee, a step Mr. Pences advisers have hoped would stop the committee from issuing a subpoena for Mr. Pence. Representatives of Mr. Pence have been negotiating with the committees lawyers for months.

That would be a pretty unprecedented step for the committee to take, Mr. Short said of a subpoena for the former vice president, adding that it would be very difficult for me to see that scenario unfolding.

Emily Cochrane and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.

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Overhaul of Electoral Count Act Will Pass, Manchin Says - The New York Times

The House select committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is borrowing techniques from federal prosecutions, employing aggressive tactics typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to break through stonewalling from former President Donald J. Trump and his allies and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case.

In what its members see as the best opportunity to hold Mr. Trump and his team accountable, the committee which has no authority to pursue criminal charges is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute them.

The panels investigation is being run by a former U.S. attorney, and the top investigator brought in to focus on Mr. Trumps inner circle is also a former U.S. attorney. The panel has hired more than a dozen other former federal prosecutors.

The committee has interviewed more than 475 witnesses and issued more than 100 subpoenas, including broad ones to banks as well as telecommunications and social media companies. Some of the subpoenas have swept up the personal data of Trump family members and allies, local politicians and at least one member of Congress, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Though no subpoena has been issued for Mr. Jordan, his text messages and calls have shown up in communications with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and in a call with Mr. Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

Armed with reams of telephone records and metadata, the committee has used link analysis, a data mapping technique that former F.B.I. agents say was key to identifying terrorist networks in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The F.B.I. said it used a similar tactic last month to identify the seller of a gun to a man in Texas who took hostages at a synagogue.

Faced with at least 16 Trump allies who have signaled they will not fully cooperate with the committee, investigators have taken a page out of organized crime prosecutions and quietly turned at least six lower-level Trump staff members into witnesses who have provided information about their bosses activities.

The committee is also considering granting immunity to key members of Mr. Trumps inner circle who have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as a way of pressuring them to testify.

Having lived through and being a part of every major congressional investigation over the past 50 years from Iran-contra to Whitewater to everything else, this is the mother of all investigations and a quantum leap for Congress in a way Ive never seen before, said Stanley Brand, a Democrat and the former top lawyer for the House who is now representing Dan Scavino, one of Mr. Trumps closest aides, in the investigation.

It is a development, Mr. Brand suggested, that Democrats might one day come to regret. When a frontier is pushed back, it doesnt recede, he said. They think theyre fighting for the survival of the democracy and the ends justify the means. Just wait if the Republicans take over.

The committees aggressive approach carries with it another obvious risk: that it could fail to turn up compelling new information about Mr. Trumps efforts to hold onto power after his defeat or to make a persuasive case for a Justice Department prosecution. Mr. Trump survived years of scrutiny by the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and two impeachments. Despite a swirl of new investigations since he left office, the former president remains the dominant force in Republican politics.

The committee has no law enforcement role, and its stated goal is to write a comprehensive report and propose recommendations, including for legislation, to try to make sure the events of Jan. 6 are never repeated.

Nevertheless, its members have openly discussed what criminal laws Mr. Trump and his allies may have violated and how they might recommend that the Justice Department investigate him. Such a step could put considerable additional pressure on Mr. Garland, who has not given any specific public indication that the department is investigating Mr. Trump or would support prosecuting him.

As the House investigation was gaining momentum late last year, the committees vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, read from the criminal code to describe a law she believed could be used to prosecute Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress as it sought to certify the Electoral College count of his defeat.

Ms. Cheney and the other Republican on the committee, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, were censured by the Republican National Committee on Friday for their participation in the investigation.

Mr. Trumps allies have grown angry not just at the aggressiveness of the committee for example, in making subpoenas public before they have been served but also at the expansive list of people questioned, some of whom, these allies maintain, had minimal to no involvement in the events of Jan. 6.

The tactics being used by the committee were described by nearly a dozen people, including members of the committee, aides, witnesses and their lawyers, and other people familiar with the panels work. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing what the committee says is a confidential investigation.

By comparison, the House select committee that spent two and a half years investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack issued just a dozen or so subpoenas a small fraction of the number issued by the Jan. 6 committee so far and made no criminal referrals. The Jan. 6 panel has already recommended criminal contempt of Congress charges against three witnesses who refused to cooperate, and one, Stephen K. Bannon, has already been indicted by the Justice Department.

Members of the Jan. 6 committee say the obstacles thrown up by Mr. Trump and his allies and the high stakes of the investigation have left the panel with no choice but to use every tool at its disposal.

Its not a criminal investigation, but having experienced former prosecutors who know how to run complex, white-collar investigations working on a plot to overturn the presidential election is a very useful talent among your team, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member.

To lead the inquiry, the panel hired Timothy J. Heaphy, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. In that position, he oversaw a number of high-profile prosecutions, including one in which the drugmaker Abbott Laboratories pleaded guilty in a fraud case and paid a $1.5 billion fine.

Ms. Cheney and the committees chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, also hired John Wood, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri and a former deputy associate attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. He is a senior investigative counsel for the committee and is focusing on Mr. Trumps inner circle. Neither Mr. Heaphy nor Mr. Wood had previously worked on a congressional investigation.

Some of the Democrats on the committee were concerned that if the panel was too aggressive, Republicans might turn the tables on the Democrats whenever they took back control of the House. But Ms. Cheney insisted that the committee be as aggressive as possible.

She said that the panel would face significant resistance from Mr. Trumps inner circle, and that the committee would be criticized no matter what it did, so there was no reason to hold back in the face of efforts to impede its work.

Mr. Trump moved to block the National Archives from handing over documents from his White House, leading to a monthslong court fight that ended with the committee receiving the documents.

At least 16 witnesses have sued to try to block the committees subpoenas. Four of the panels most sought-after targets the conservative lawyer John Eastman; Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department lawyer deeply involved in Mr. Trumps plays to try to stay in power; the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; and the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. invoked the Fifth Amendment as a way to avoid answering questions without the threat of a contempt of Congress charge.

Three Republican members of Congress Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; and Mr. Jordan told the committee that they would refuse to sit for questioning.

Despite those obstacles, the committee turned its attention to lower-level aides, who investigators knew were in the room for many of the key events that occurred in the lead-up to and during the assault, or were told almost immediately about what had occurred. Those witnesses tended to be younger and have far less money to hire high-end white-collar defense lawyers to fend off the committee. So far, the committee has spoken to at least a half-dozen lower-level aides who fall into this category.

When Mr. Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, refused to testify, the panel turned to his top aide, Ben Williamson, who complied with a subpoena and sat for hours of questioning. After Mr. Clark, the Justice Department lawyer, refused to cooperate, a former senior counsel who worked for him, Kenneth Klukowski, sat for an interview with the committee.

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel, said the committee was not trying to flip witnesses the way investigators might do in a criminal case. But, he said, If you drew some kind of social diagrams of whos testifying and whos not, pretty much everyone is testifying, except for those who are in the immediate entourage of Donald Trump.

Among the other aides who have testified before the committee are Marc Short, Greg Jacob and Keith Kellogg, all of whom worked for former Vice President Mike Pence. Three former spokeswomen for Mr. Trump have also cooperated: Kayleigh McEnany, Stephanie Grisham and Alyssa Farah Griffin.

The committees investigative work related to Mr. Trumps current spokesman illustrates the aggressive steps the panel is taking. The spokesman, Taylor Budowich, turned over more than 1,700 pages of documents and sat for roughly four hours of sworn testimony.

Shortly after testifying, Mr. Budowich learned that the committee had requested financial records from his bank related to pro-Trump rallies. A federal judge turned down an emergency request by Mr. Budowich to force congressional investigators to relinquish his banking records, which JPMorgan Chase had already given to the committee.

Investigators also sought a broad swath of phone records from Ali Alexander, a right-wing rally organizer who was cooperating with the committee, for two months before Jan. 6, 2021 well before he claims to have thought of planning an event that day and for one month after.

Late last month, another example of the panels investigative approach emerged. Mr. Jones, the conspiracy theorist, who has sued the committee, was questioned by investigators in a virtual interview. He later said on his radio show that in the interview he had invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination nearly 100 times.

I just had a very intense experience being interrogated by the Jan. 6 committee lawyers, he said. They were polite, but they were dogged.

Even though Mr. Jones refused to share information with the committee, he said the investigators seemed to have found ways around his lack of cooperation. He said the committee had already obtained text messages from him.

They have everything thats already on my phones and things, he said. I saw my text messages with political organizers tied to the Jan. 6 rally.

Maggie Haberman, Matthew Cullen and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.

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Jan. 6 Panel Adopts Prosecution Tactics for Its Investigation - The New York Times

UFC commentator Joe Rogan has been accused of spreading Covid-19 misinformation on his Spotify podcast and after he issued an apology, Dwayne The Rock Johnson publicly showed support for Rogan. However, a Twitter user brought up how Rogan used the N-word repeatedly during his podcasts and The Rock responded with the following

I was not aware of his N word use prior to my comments, but now Ive become educated to his complete narrative. Learning moment for me.

Twitter users started digging into The Rocks Twitter past and a message he wrote to someone in 2011 resurfaced

Its not our fault youre turning tranny tricks to put yourself thru nursing school.

The tweet was deleted but Donald Trump Jr. publicly called out The Rock and wrote the following

Wow, @TheRock, you cant just try to quietly delete transphobic attacks without giving a groveling apology and expect to ever work in Hollywood again. Do @UnderArmour, @Ford, @Apple, @Netflix and the rest of his sponsors/partners agree with this hateful rhetoric?

Cancel culture really jumping the shark when longtime friends start throwing each other under the bus to please a half dozen woke douchebags going full fake outrage on Twitter like The Rock did to Joe Rogan. Pathetic!

Trump Jr. also commented The Rock referring to John Cena as a bloated transvestite Wonder Woman during a promo

Yikes!!! More transphobia from @TheRock. Starting to notice a pattern here. How do the executives at @UnderArmour, @Ford, @Apple and @Netflix sleep at night when theyre lining their pockets from this type of bigotry and hatred? Unless they agree with it??? (Tweet)

Trump Jr. also retweeted a video of The Rock talking in Chinese during a WWE promo

Follow this link:
The Rock called out by Donald Trump Jr. and accused of 'transphobia' - NoDQ.com

Akron Beacon Journal Editorial Board

Some sad news out of Ohio this week: We lead the nation in per capita COVID deaths. We lag in full vaccination 57% compared to the national rate of 64%.

Its sad, because so many deaths in the past year could have been prevented, if only people had been willing to get vaccinated. More than 33,000 Ohioans have died since the start of the pandemic, nearly 15,000 since vaccines became widely available in April 2021.

Little wonder, with such a low vaccination rate, that hospitalizations started soaring in the fall of 2021.

Fortunately, the worst might be over statewide, hospitalizations have dropped one-thirdover two weeks,from 6,005 on Jan. 18 to 3,968 on Tuesday.

In the Akron area, daily hospitalization levels remain above what they were in the fall and summer, but have sunk from the all-time record of 399 on Jan. 6. Unvaccinated people continue to make up the majority of COVID patients, a Summa Health official says.

Opposition to the vaccine is still strong among many people, often because of misinformation.

But in an interesting development, Donald Trump is promoting the COVID vaccine and booster. He pointed out to a right-wing interviewer that The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take their vaccine.

Later, in mid-January, he went further, saying he believes the vaccines have saved tens of millions throughout the world. He called "gutless" those conservative Republican politicians who won't say whether they've been fully vaccinated.

No doubt this is a not-so-subtle way ofreminding everyone that the Trump administration rolled out Operation Warp Speed to help bring COVID-19 vaccines to the American public. Trump, after all, hasnt ruled out a run for the presidency in 2024.

Unfortunately, Trump spent too much time early in the pandemic talking about unproven and dangerous treatments. The easy solutions and wishful thinking that marked Trumps unwise pronouncementscontinue among those who hope to achieve his popularity numbers.

Nobody liked the lockdowns of 2020 that were seen in Ohio and elsewhere, but with lives on the line, some of us did find comfort in bold moves. There were no vaccines and little information about the emerging disease.

Unfortunately, what began as disagreement over COVID safety measures has turned into political opportunity that Trump and his followers have used to form a bond with extremists.

In Ohio, Republicans hoping to replace outgoing Sen. Rob Portman often sound like the 45th president as they hope to gain Trumps endorsement.

The candidate with statewide name recognition, Josh Mandel, tweeted after a Trump rally last month: Incredible speech and right on target END VACCINE MANDATES NOW! This all-cap tweet sure reminds us of Trump.

Our work force and student populations wouldnt need mandates, however, if more people made vaccine appointments instead of excuses. Those folks need some prodding.

But some people are actively rejecting vaccines and finding receptive lawmakers in Ohio, with one Republicanlawmaker offering a bill that virtually would prohibit all vaccine mandates. The Ohio House ultimately passed a different bill, one that would weaken COVID vaccine mandates by adding broad exemptions for most workers.

What exactly do our politicians stand for? Why cater to people on the fringes of society?

Wed like to see our politicians have real discussions about the best ways to approach a crisis like COVID. Once vaccinations became available and we knew more about COVIDs spread, it was certainly reasonable to discuss whether it was time to return children to in-person learning.

But shouting about how awful mandates are isn't preventing deaths and serious illnesses. This inability to hold a discussion might be why we are also plagued by super-rich candidates who fund their own races.

Five GOP candidates for Ohios Senate seat spent a total of nearly $30 million of their own money on campaigning last year. Investment banker Mike Gibbons led the pack, putting $11.4 million toward his run. Businessman Bernie Moreno loaned his campaign $3.75 million, but on Thursday announcedhes dropping out.

Those numbers give new meaning to the phrase "winning at all costs." The sums are shocking. As is this number:155. That's how many Ohioans are dying each day of COVID-19.

When it's time to vote, that latter number should be the one that matters. Ohioans need to elect candidates who care about lowering the death rate and raising the vaccination rate. Being sensible and finding middle ground on theseand other issues would be for the good of all.

Here is the original post:
Vaccines, mandates, lockdowns and more: Politicians need to avoid fringe messages - Akron Beacon Journal

She is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. But when the former US president came to her home city and praised coronavirus vaccines, Flora Moore did something she never thought possible. She booed him.

He said take the vaccine but we all booed and said no, she recalled of Trumps event with broadcaster Bill OReilly in Orlando, Florida. He heard us loud and clear because the Amway Center was packed. We let him know no and a couple of us even hollered out, Its killing people!

There is no scientific basis to the claim that the vaccines are killing people. In fact, they have demonstrably saved thousands of lives. But Moore is indicative of the extreme anti-vaccine sentiment consuming the base of the Republican party a monster that Trump himself can no longer control.

America is exhausted by a pandemic still killing more than 2,400 people a day, the overwhelming majority of whom are unvaccinated, bringing the total death toll to 900,000.

In more conventional times, Trumps Operation Warp Speed, which developed vaccines in record time, would be a source of pride for his voters. Even his successor, Joe Biden, has praised the initiative, stating: Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America was one of the first countries to get the vaccine.

But Trumps eagerness to claim credit has been undone by conservatives backlash against Bidens efforts to legally require worker vaccinations, which they cast as a threat to individual freedom. The ex-presidents customary applause turned to jeers when he encouraged supporters to get vaccinated and told OReilly that he received a booster himself.

What was arguably Trumps most important legacy from an otherwise disastrous pandemic response, and a divisive four-year presidency, has turned into a political liability, threatening to turn his own fans against him. Laurie Garrett, an award-winning science writer, observed: Its probably the only time his base has ever booed him about anything. If he can no longer brag about Operation Warp Speed, what can he brag about regarding how he handled Covid?

The anti-vaccine fervor has been stoked by some Republican politicians as well as rightwing media. Last month, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a notorious sceptic, gave writer Alex Berenson a platform to baselessly proclaim, The mRNA Covid vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market now. No one should get them. No one should get boosted. No one should get double-boosted.

The web has also become a place for unscientific conspiracy theories to thrive. Moore, the Trump supporter in Florida, said she gets her information from her 30,000 followers on Facebook as well as Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.

She said: I dont trust the government. I dont trust the pharmaceutical companies. Im active in politics here and found out lots of people were having complications and dropping dead. Theres a lot of jobs I wontt even take because they want me to get a vaccine.

The commercial analyst, who is in her 40s, refuses to wear a face mask in restaurants or at work. Her radical views on the issue outweigh even her faith in Trump.

I trust him on certain things, but hes not my God, she said.

Trump appears to have heeded the shift and recalibrated. At a rally in Conroe, Texas, last Saturday, where anti-vaccine views were again rampant, he channeled the crowds anger towards Bidens mandate for federal government workers (a similar mandate for businesses was rejected by the supreme court).

It is time for the American people to declare independence from every last Covid mandate, Trump said to cheers. We have to tell this band of hypocrites, tyrants and racists that were done with having them control our lives, mess with our children and close our businesses. Were moving on from Covid.

He then added briskly: We did a great job. Operation Warp Speed has been praised by everybody but its now time to move on. Notably in the remarks he did not use the word vaccines at all. It was a pivot that appeared to acknowledge the political threat and it is enough to satisfy voters such as Moore.

She commented: I think hes gotten the message that he can say he took the vaccine and nothing happened to him and if you desire to take it, take it, but if you dont want to, leave it alone.

The number of anti-vaxxers in the Republican base is hard to estimate. The Guardian interviewed half a dozen Trump rally attendees last week and found that most had got the shots. They included Jered Pettis, from Phoenix, Arizona, who had changed his mind on the topic.

We were totally anti-vaccine, didnt really believe in it, didnt want to get it, he said. Then a friend got it pretty severe: he could hardly breathe and felt like his head was going to explode. He didnt go to the hospital but he was very, very sick to the point where he told me, Hey, Jered. Im very thankful for every breath of air that I get now. After I had seen and heard one of my best friends go through that, I changed my mind in a heartbeat.

Pettis received two Pfizer doses, then caught the virus just over a month ago. So thank God, because I would have been a lot sicker than I was. It was almost like a mild cold. I could just imagine if I was not vaccinated.

The 50-year-old exterior designer describes the recent booing as absolutely ridiculous and believes that Trump deserves credit, not criticism, for the vaccines. Even though you may be anti-vaccine, youll change your mind if you get sick or you get somebody around you that dies.

Even so, deep-seated suspicion of the vaccines could deprive Republicans of what might have been a powerful boast going into Novembers midterm elections. Garrett, author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, points out that counties that voted for Trump in 2020 have a far higher mortality rate than counties that voted for Biden.

The Republicans are in a bind, she said. They are experiencing a higher death rate in their ranks and it is directly linked to their positions on Covid. The one thing they could claim as a great benefit that was saving lives, vaccination, theyre now being compelled by their own base to renounce.

Vaccine scepticism has never been a solely rightwing stance. Some libertarians on the left have opposed profit-driven big pharma and championed holistic alternatives. But on Covid-19, at least, this group appears to be significantly smaller than the conservative holdouts.

Garrett said: All the polls are showing tremendous partisan differential in everything to do with vaccines and it has been increasing steadily for the last two years. Its very much driven by the rightwing myths and narratives around Covid.

There still are some of those ex-hippie types that dont want to get vaccinated, but if you look at the breakdown on political sentiment about vaccination, willingness to get a third booster or even a fourth if it becomes available, its so Democrat. Its incredible Garrett said. I never thought in my life I would see something like this. It is an absolute partisan divide and its widening.

About nine in 10 Democrats and six in 10 Republicans have been vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, while 62% of Democrats and just 32% of Republicans have been both vaccinated and boosted. The trend suggests that Republican candidates for the midterm elections are likely to follow Trumps lead in attacking Bidens mandates rather than celebrating Trumps vaccines.

But if any Republican can outflank Trump on the issue ahead of the 2024 presidential election, it may be the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who has refused to say whether he received a booster. The New York Times reported that Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, found Trumps lead over DeSantis closing to just nine points among party members who like both men.

Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: They can get disgruntled with Trump, certainly, and DeSantis is the obvious choice for people who are anti-vax. But giving up on Trump is like giving up on their dreams at this point. Trump was their savior. Trump brought about the wholesale remasculization of that portion of the American psyche.

Indeed, despite the possible split with his Make America Great Again movement on vaccines, Trump remains by far the biggest beast in the Republican jungle and this week announced that he is entering 2022 with a staggering $122m in campaign funds.

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman active on social media, said: I talk to the extremists all the time and I agree with Trumps people that theyre locked with him. Theyre not going to anybody else.

Walsh finds that 90% of the base are anti-vaccine, do not believe Biden won and either have no problem with the 6 January insurrection or regard it as a patriotic day.

You could not as a Republican candidate run for office if you told people to get vaccinated or if you said Joe Biden won fair and square, he added. If you said either one of those two things, you couldnt win a Republican primary.

See the original post:
Trump is not my God: how the former presidents only vaccine victory turned sour - The Guardian