Vanity Fair Report Claims Lame Duck Trump White House Officials “Scrambled” To Jump The Vaccine Line As Administration Came To A Close

Sickening.


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629 points

As COVID-19 vaccines rolled out in late December and early January, what Vanity Fair describes as a “secretive scramble” took place in the Trump White House with officials clamoring to jump the line to get the coveted vaccine. And for sure, they weren’t just the desk jockeys, but “political appointees at very high levels” that approached chief of staff Mark Meadows and members of the National Security Council to ask to be on the list. This is like the Hunger Games.

And it’s rather odd since the former president was vaccinated, but we only learned of that later. It’s almost as if his entire administration knew of the importance of getting vaccinated amid the raging pandemic. But, they had to be vaxholes about it and jump in line.

Vanity Fair calls it “the ultimate VIP list.”

“On it were the names of U.S. government officials whose work was considered so essential that they needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from a limited allotment that would otherwise have gone to the general public. The allotment was intended to protect career staff who could not telecommute (such as White House butlers), critical workers in the field (such as Secret Service agents), and those in the line of presidential succession (such as the secretary of state),” the outlet reports. “The question of who was eligible in an outgoing administration, with just weeks remaining until the inauguration of a new president, was complex. To make the cut, your role had to be “essential” to national functions.”

“The quest to get on the White House list—which was closely guarded by Meadows’s office and a small cadre of NSC officials—attracted an array of supplicants,” the report continues. “They ranged from the representatives of cabinet secretaries to young White House desk jockeys to those prepared to leverage their connections to President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.”

“Among this group, Vanity Fair has learned, were chiefs of staff of cabinet agencies, some of whose bosses had become notorious for publicly disregarding pandemic safeguards like mask wearing,” the report states. ‘They wanted to know, “Would they be able to get four or six doses for their front office?” said a former senior administration official. Though some would claim to be inquiring on behalf of their teams, the official said, in fact “their ask was not about their employees.”’

Oh, it’s all about maintaining their fancy pants lifestyles, apparently.

“Why, in a White House infamous for flouting pandemic precautions, would some political appointees in the executive branch show such determination in attempting to score a shot? According to the former senior administration official, the answer is simple enough: Vaccinations would enable these high-flying rule flouters to “maintain” their active lifestyles,” the report adds.

Well, I’ve noticed that some of my colleagues and friends have been vaccinated while others haven’t — and the ones that have didn’t jump the line. Like the outlet mentioned, it’s like the Hunger Games with the former administration. We aren’t even shocked over anything to do with the former administration after they disregarded basic guidelines amid the raging pandemic to flatten the coronavirus curve. Donald Trump shamelessly held super-spreader events to largely maskless crowds while mocking social distancing. And yet, he got the vaccine without telling the public at the time.

You can read the full report here.

Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0

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