In a segment that further illustrates that for the left, politics always comes first, former Missouri Democrat Senator turned MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill used her appearance on Thursday night’s All In with Chris Hayes to blame Republicans for the low vaccination rates in rural areas of the country.
Before going to McCaskill, Hayes rattled off some vaccination statistics in her home state of Missouri: "...vaccinations are 56% of adults have at least one dose. Only 49% fully vaccinated but in parts of the state where we have these outbreaks, you got in the southeast particularly, about 30% of residents age 12+ vaccinated.” He then asked her what she thought the reasons were for the lack of adults who are vaccinated.
Instead of giving real reasons, she decided to play politics and blame Republicans. How original (click "expand"):
You have not just anti-vaxxers. You have a governor who is -- has a huge part in this disaster that is currently in the making in Missouri. Someone who today tried to tell Missourians he was going to stop the federal government from going door to door. Well nobody was talking about the federal government going door to door. (...) The other element here that I think we've got to remember is that lady on Fox News said you should talk to your doctor. A huge number of people in rural Missouri don't have a doctor. In Missouri, you can't qualify for Medicaid if you're a grown adult without children, no matter how poor you are. So there is a large pocket of people who do not have any health insurance and only go to the emergency room if they are really sick.
In response to that display of insanity and delusion, former Biden administration COVID Response Coordinator Andy Slavitt doubled down:
“I think this whole notion that Margie Taylor Greene and others have started, that if the government is behind something, therefore, it is by definition, fascism, is a very worn out and dangerous trope that is essentially trying to fight a political battle where I say the Biden administration very assiduously has been avoiding political battles.”
Not surprisingly, Slavitt and McCaskill are demagoguing the issue here and purposefully ignoring the real reason why many Americans haven’t been able to get the COVID vaccine. Ironically, Chris Hayes pointed out the reality was far more complex:
We're at 67, 68%, so you think about 32% of eligible adults who haven't gotten it. And I think, you know, people that are really for ideological reasons, or whatever reasons like dead set against it, that might be 20%. There's still -- there’s still folks there. There’s still a lot of gettable persuadable folks. It's a question of access, accessibility, ease, right, all those things, that if the FDA moved from emergency use authorization to full authorization that that would help.
Wow, when Chris Hayes is the voice of reason on MSNBC, you know the segment is certifiably insane. Whether Hayes meant to or not, he told the truth and contradicted his two guests, and admitted that supposed exclusively Republican "anti-vaxxers" were not an impediment to the United States achieving herd immunity. If 80% of Americans are vaccinated that is more than enough. Of course, prominent left-wing anti-vaxxers were never called out in the discussion.
The real solution is to expand access to the vaccine in rural areas. Instead of thumbing her nose at rural Americans, McCaskill should advise the Biden administration to do just that. But she would rather hate on people in the flyover states. No wonder she lost reelection during a Democrat wave year.
Claire McCaskill’s lies and gaslighting were made possible by sponsorships from Discover and Allstate. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
Click “expand” to read the relevant transcript.
All In With Chris Hayes
7/8/2021
8:08 PM
CHRIS HAYES: Claire, let me start with you. In your home state of Missouri, there's really some worrying stuff happening there. I'll tell you what the data say that there's, you know, vaccinations are 56% of adults have at least one dose. Only 49% fully vaccinated but in parts of the state where we have these outbreaks, you got in the southeast particularly, about 30% of residents age 12+ vaccinated. What's going on?
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Well if you look at those dark areas on the map, Chris, where you have a significantly higher number of people vaccinated, those are the areas in and around Kansas City and St. Louis. And in the middle of the state in Columbia, Missouri. Where our university is located. The rest of the state you have a real problem. You have not just anti-vaxxers. You have a governor who is -- has a huge part in this disaster that is currently in the making in Missouri. Someone who today tried to tell Missourians he was going to stop the federal government from going door to door. Well nobody was talking about the federal government going door to door.
They're talking about community activists and leaders and volunteers going out in their own neighborhoods and trying to encourage people to get the vaccine. The other element here that I think we've got to remember is that lady on Fox News said you should talk to your doctor. A huge number of people in rural Missouri don't have a doctor. In Missouri, you can't qualify for Medicaid if you're a grown adult without children, no matter how poor you are. So there is a large pocket of people who do not have any health insurance and only go to the emergency room if they are really sick.
So there's not a doctor to talk to, but many of them talk to their minister, Chris. The evangelicals have a huge part in this in rural Missouri especially in southwest Missouri, where we have megachurches. If those ministers would step up and preach God's word about taking care of your fellow man, I think we could get our vaccination rate up in some of those areas in the state where we're seeing the number one locations in the country for the delta variant.
HAYES: Andy you recently have left your position as an advisor in the White House, where you guys were dealing with exactly these questions. And I guess what's -- how do you understand the right approach here, and what do you make of the sort of proactive push against the mandate before there is a mandate when everyone's just trying to do the persuasion thing?
ANDY SLAVITT: Well, look, my heart goes out along with the Senator to people in her state where, you know, she's watching what are essentially a set of preventable deaths begin to occur and pile up. Because we have actually a very dangerous variant in delta, but the great news is we also have something that can stop it in its tracks, and we all have to be, take a deep breath and be smart enough not to bait one another into turning this into a political fight, where people look for political advantage. I think this whole notion that Margie Taylor Greene and others have started, that if the government is behind something, therefore, it is by definition, fascism, is a very worn out and dangerous trope that is essentially trying to fight a political battle where I say the Biden administration very assiduously has been avoiding political battles.
I give great credit to the president for steering clear of taking the bait on a lot of this chum being thrown in the water by effectively saying look we're going to be steadfast focused on every single American and protecting every single American. And you can try to distract us by calling us names and talking about fascism, but the truth of the matter is, that they've got to be singularly focused on what they’ve been elected to do, which the last president did not do.
HAYES: Yeah and, and, and there has also been an absence of leadership. I mean, part of what's happening here is there's this, like, real cowardice, right? This vacuum. I mean, I can think of people, Mitch McConnell today coming out and saying you should get vaccinated, good for him. Jim Justice, Republican Governor of West Virginia being very, you know, proactive, saying like we really need to do this. But a lot of Republican leaders, I don't know what the governor of Missouri, what note he's been striking on this but a lot of Republican leaders just kind of pushing it to the side or, or using this idea of like standing up to big government as a way of being essentially like anti-pro vaccine, Claire.
MCCASKILL: Yeah. Our governor has really been a problem. We never had any kind of mask mandate that was real. He continues to not even encourage people to get the vaccine. I will give Roy Blunt credit. He was out today and said the vaccine's safe, I took it the first day I could, all my family took it the first day we could. But he's a lonely voice in the Republican Party in Missouri. We have a hot primary for a Senate seat next year and they're all trying to out-Trump each other and the governor is kind of leading the parade, even though he's not running. I mean, he had the nerve to actually blame management for a lack of ventilators being ready at this dramatic shift in the environment in southwest Missouri. And it is really hard when you have a governor that is not supporting our front line health care workers and is frankly doing nothing to encourage vaccination and spreading false rumors that nothing would spread faster in rural Missouri, I can assure you, Chris, and the federal government is going to knock on your door. And that's the rumor he's spreading and it's wildly irresponsible.
HAYES: Let me ask a technical question, Andy. One of the things that I've seen people say is that it would help you know -- we're at 67, 68%, so you think about 32% of eligible adults who haven't gotten it. And I think, you know, people that are really for ideological reasons, or whatever reasons like dead set against it, that might be 20%. There's still -- there’s still folks there. There’s still a lot of gettable persuadable folks. It's a question of access, accessibility, ease, right, all those things, that if the FDA moved from emergency use authorization to full authorization that that would help. That I've seen some people say well I don't know, it's emergency. Do you think that would help? Is that something that we should be thinking of in the horizon?
SLAVITT: Well, it will help. I think we're probably only likely weeks away from that happening and I do think that this should create a big push for people to say ok, fence-sitters you said you were waiting for the jury to come and tell you whether or not this vaccine was safe and effective, it's now been in hundreds of millions of Americans, it's safe. We've now seen it’s saved hundreds of thousands of lives. There was a study out which said that the acceleration of the vaccine from the Biden Administration saved hundreds of thousands of lives. So now the FDA has done a thorough review and here is what they've said. If you've been on the fence, we understand, but it's time to go. And one other thing I'd say just in terms of governors and senators and people speaking up, I think every day somebody should play the tape from Chris Christie, who talked about what it was like when he believed he wouldn’t get COVID. When he believed it was all political. And what he felt like in the hospital. Because I’ll tell you what, your political affiliation strips away pretty fast when you think you’re going to die. And he had a very moving couple of minutes -- now unfortunately he had to find religion to get there -- that people really ought to really listen to in southwest Missouri.
