Ivanka Trump’s Vaccine Selfie Didn’t Go Over as Planned

On Wednesday, after a monthslong hiatus from social media, former first daughter Ivanka Trump tweeted that she’d received the COVID-19 vaccine and encouraged others to do so as well. “Today, I got the shot!!! I hope that you do too!” she wrote, adding, “Thank you Nurse Torres!!!” alongside a blue heart emoji, like a real #influencer #girlboss. Undoubtedly, Trump believed she was doing a public service by urging her followers to get the lifesaving vaccine and demonstrating that she had no qualms about doing so herself. She likely figured she’d receive a deluge of praise for the tweet, with people calling her a true leader and 2028 presidential material, and overwhelming her assistant with requests to appear on all the morning shows and queries re: where to send the congratulatory flowers. In reality, things didn’t go quite as well as Trump had presumably expected.  https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1382435705847226369

Obviously there was a large contingent of people who expressed justifiable anger that the ex-first daughter hadn’t done more (or anything) on the coronavirus front back when she was a White House employee and her father was in power. “You could have told people that covid wasn’t a ‘dem hoax’. You could have told people Covid wasn’t going to ‘disappear like a miracle’, or with the ‘warmer weather.’ You could’ve helped stop hundreds of thousands of American deaths but you didn’t. You didn’t. So you’re too late,” wrote one Twitter user, referencing just a few of the things Donald Trump said about the virus last year. “Some of us remember how your husband abandoned NYers, leaving them to fend for themselves as the pandemic raged, simply because their governor wouldn’t kowtow to Trump’s vanity,” said another, alluding to the the fact that Jared Kushner declared in March 2020 that New Yorkers “are going to suffer and that’s their problem,” a comment that made it onto a Times Square billboard. “You couldn’t just whisper ‘hey masks are ok’ into daddy’s ear?” wondered a third. “Too bad you refused to step up while your dad and his soulless cohorts politicized the pandemic, hid its serious deadliness, were spreading lies and propaganda about Covid and its prevention,” remarked yet another.

Perhaps even more worrisome, though, were the reactions from people not pissed at Princess Purses’s flaming hypocrisy, but angry at her for getting the vaccine in the first place. “No thanks! With a 99% survival rate, I shall pass. With Bill Gates involved I will not get one,” said one user. “So so disappointed in you! How could you,” wrote another. Other comments included: “Hell no. Why would you post this?”; “Nope not putting that in my body”; “Wow that’s extremely disappointing, but honestly I’m not surprised”; and “Nope and please stop trying to manipulate us into doing so. It’s surprising to see you doing this now like the left and Hollywood have been.” https://twitter.com/SRuhle/status/1382451368208785415

All of which tracks with the news that Republicans are refusing to get any one of the vaccines necessary to help end the pandemic, likely in large part because the former president of the United States (1) spent a year downplaying the risks of the virus, (2) got his shot privately in January on his way out the door, and (3) only recently encouraged others to get it. According to a Monmouth University poll conducted between April 8 and April 12, a whopping 43% of Republicans say they’ll never get the coronavirus vaccine (versus just 5% of Democrats). In a Quinnipiac poll, 45% of Republicans said they “don’t plan” on getting the shot. Unsurprisingly, states that voted for Trump in 2020 are lagging behind those that went for Joe Biden when it comes to vaccinating eligible adults, according to the Associated Press.