Trump-Biden divide hampers Covid vaccine trust-building effort

Donald Trump wants credit for a pandemic-defeating vaccine, but is aggrieved Joe Biden won’t give it to him.

Biden wants help promoting the vaccine to wary Americans, but isn’t expected to ask Trump to assist.

The result is that even though the country’s two most high-profile leaders both claim to want the same thing — enough vaccinations to eradicate the pandemic — hyperpartisan divisions are preventing them from helping each other achieve that goal.

Biden’s team, for its part, knows it has to reach out to a Trump base hesitant about the vaccine. But it hasn’t settled on a plan or decided which messengers would be best to enlist, according to one person close to Biden. A transition health policy adviser said names like Fox News host Sean Hannity and Sen. Rand Paul have been floated but overtures have yet occurred. Trump and his allies have been inconsistent messengers about the coronavirus, downplaying basic medical guidelines and pushing misinformation about treatments, making them difficult partners in a public messaging campaign.

Conversely, Trump’s aides say the president won’t want to help Biden. They say the president-elect is intentionally ignoring Trump’s vaccine accomplishments and merely playing partisan politics. Biden, they said, should vocally give Trump praise for pushing for what they have dubbed the “Trump vaccine” in record-breaking time.

“Biden’s partisan lens is a disservice to the republic at this critical time,” said Bryan Lanza, who worked on the 2016 campaign and remains close to the White House.

It's just the latest sign of how political polarization is hampering the country’s ability to combat America’s biggest public health crisis in decades, even when political leaders largely agree on what should happen. And the stakes are incredibly high. Unless 70 to 80 percent of the total U.S. population gets vaccinated, the country won’t be able to achieve the herd immunity needed to suppress the virus.

“The best way for [Trump] to take credit for vaccinations is for him to support the scientists and the scientific process and let it play out to ensure people have confidence in the vaccine,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association.

On Jan. 20, Biden will take over the country’s Covid vaccination efforts. Instantly, he will be tasked with leading one of most logistically complicated and challenging public health messaging campaigns since the HIV/AIDS crisis and the polio vaccine launch. The process will involve coordination between local, state and federal governments, a rapid buildup of vaccine storage facilities and a PR blitz to persuade people to voluntarily take the shot.

Biden will simultaneously need to steer a campaign to convince Americans that the vaccine is not harmful and that it represents the best chance of eradicating the pandemic. And the Americans that need to be swayed are disproportionately Republican.

New polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation released Tuesday found significant vaccine hesitancy among several groups, but Republicans were more likely than any other group surveyed — be it race, age group, gender or occupation — to say they will not get vaccinated even if the shots are free and deemed safe.

The poll also found Republicans had different reasons for resisting vaccination than other hesitant groups. While African Americans expressed concerns about the vaccine’s side effects and the speed at which it was developed, a top reason for Republicans was the belief that Covid-19 risks are being exaggerated. Vaccine-hesitant Republicans were also far more likely to reject guidance on wearing a face mask, making them more likely to contract and spread the virus.

“Given that the basic public health messaging about the benefits of mask-wearing has not broken through for many of these individuals, novel strategies may be necessary to connect with them during vaccination outreach efforts,” the researchers said.

One of those “novel strategies” could involve enlisting Trump. Though the study found Trump ranked last among the general public as a trusted voice on the vaccine, he was the second-most trusted source of information among Republicans, well ahead of state officials, local health departments and the FDA.

The person close to Biden said the transition team is aware they have to reach out to Trump-friendly conservatives who are wary or outright opposed to taking the vaccine. But plans for which messengers to recruit “have yet to be fully baked,” the person said. The Biden transition did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“That’s definitely being contemplated and discussed,” the person said. “Particularly how to speak to the more conspiratorial, ideological group.”

The person added that Biden’s team has not yet discussed asking Trump himself to be a part of the outreach effort — a high-risk, high-reward gamble.

“It might be one way for Trump to be part of a reconciliation process and secure his legacy as part of the vaccine’s development, so I wouldn’t reject it out of hand,” the person said. “But not only is he very unpredictable, should you really have the person who has been the most unconstructive for public health becoming the messenger for the vaccine?”

Others in Biden’s circle floated other conservative voices who could be recruited for the effort, including Paul, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator and physician, Hannity, one of Trump’s favorite TV hosts, and Trump-boosting radio personality Laura Ingraham.

But the health policy adviser working with the Biden transition said that in order for that outreach and collaboration to be successful, Biden has to be willing to give the Trump administration more credit for the record speed of the vaccine’s development, aided by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

“The Biden team will have to acknowledge that, for all that we’ve criticized the current administration, part of the reason we have a vaccine is that they acted quickly,” the person said. “Have they diminished their own success with all of their other actions since March? Yes. But Operation Warp Speed would not have happened if they hadn’t launched a whole-of-society approach to this.”

The adviser plans to urge the transition team to “delicately approach” Trump and other leading conservatives, arguing that it’s in their interest to “put the ball in their court and make them say no.”

Steve Schale, who ran Unite the Country, a super PAC that supported Biden’s candidacy, encouraged the Biden team to be parsimonious in any Trump engagement.

“Joe Biden succeeded in the campaign by not allowing himself to play the role that Trump wanted so badly — and that was to be his daily sparring partner,” he said. “You can’t govern by spending every day reacting to Donald Trump.”

Trump’s team, however, is convinced that Biden will never show the outgoing president this kind of deference.

“It’s embarrassing to watch partisan-elect Biden turn himself into a pretzel trying to avoid acknowledging President Trump’s historical achievements,” said Lanza, the 2016 Trump campaign aide.

In a statement, a White House spokesperson pointed to the administration’s vaccine summit, held last week.

“President Trump hosted a three-hour-long, live-streamed, nationally-televised summit regarding the process for developing, reviewing, approving and equitably distributing the vaccine, which he referred to as a ‘miracle,’ because of its safety and effectiveness,” said deputy White House press secretary Brian Morgenstern. “Any mixed messages or attacks are coming from the President’s opponents for political purposes and are shameful.”

A senior Trump campaign aide said the vaccine should be dubbed the “Trump vaccine.” And a former Trump aide said Trump won’t discredit the vaccine, but that he has no incentive to help Biden. “He’ll continue to take full credit,” the ex-aide said. “He’s a loner. It’s always about ‘me.’”

Indeed, Trump supporters expect the president to make his vaccine development effort a central plank of his budding 2024 White House bid.

“Why not?” Lanza said. “Vaccines take years. We did it in a year. This is unprecedented.”

Marc Lotter, a senior Trump campaign aide, said Americans will remember Trump’s work on the vaccine years after the coronavirus has receded.

Trump has been mum on his own plans regarding taking and promoting the vaccine. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump was “absolutely open” to getting the shot, but avoided any definitive statements.

“He will receive the vaccine if the medical team determines that it's best,” she said, adding Trump "has great confidence in" the new drugs.

Yet beyond a few tweets and events, the president has largely remained out of sight during the vaccine rollout. McEnany defended his absence, saying Trump has been working “behind the scenes.” She added that some Trump administration officials would soon get the vaccine to try to instill confidence. And the Trump administration is also scrambling on its own $250 million public education campaign about the vaccine.

So as the vaccine rollout begins, Trump and Biden’s teams appear nowhere close to working in concert on a confidence-building campaign.

The partisan divide was on full display during a White House coronavirus task force call held on Monday. GOP governors went out of their way to praise the Trump administration and give them full credit for the vaccine.

“We owe it all to the Trump Administration,” gushed Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Tex.), calling the vaccine a “medical miracle."

“Everybody in this country needs to say that you all have done a hell of a job — that’s all there is to it,” added Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.)

Yet Democratic governors on the call were much more circumspect. Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) took pains to thank the “participants in Operation Warp Speed” for the vaccine’s creation — not Trump.