Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), now an MSNBC contributor, said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the Republican Party’s “failure to accept science as it relates to vaccines” means they politically own the COVID deaths of the unvaccinated.
Host Ayman Mohyeldin said, “What do you make of the GOP response and hypocrisy, right? Even thinking of Governor DeSantis in Florida who said, his guiding principle throughout the pandemic wasn’t science, wasn’t the lives of Floridians, it was freedom.”
McCaskill said, “Yeah. Well, I do think that he is playing to a very small segment of the American public. I think most Americans realize this was real and dangerous. But I really think Democrats need to continue to pound the podium about vaccinations, not just for seniors and not just for adults but also for children, to continue to pound the podium on boosters. We know now that even with Omicron, that the deaths and the serious illnesses were really focused on people who refused to accept science. Those Republicans own that. Their failure to accept science as it relates to vaccines. I mean, that’s much stronger ground to stand on than to mask or not mask.”
She added, “It has become so political that you just basically, people are so calcified in their positions about masks, you can’t really move the needle in terms of keeping people safe or gaining political traction.”
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