Look At These COVID-Denying, Republican Assholes Getting Their COVID-19 Vaccines!

But there is an upside!

Republicans have arguably enabled COVID-19's spread as cravenly as they enabled that criminal enterprise Donald Trump calls a presidency. They openly resisted public health measures that required even the most minor sacrifice or personal inconvenience. They made wearing masks another dumb culture war battle, and the dumbest among them picked fights with medical experts. They sat on their hands for months , refusing to pass another relief package, because they literally wanted financially struggling Americans so desperate that they'd willingly go out and serve chicken wings with a side of COVID.

This all worked out well for them, as evil endeavors go. Their complete lack of leadership while 319,763 Americans died didn't cost them anything at the ballot box. Republicans even came just a few seats short of reclaiming the House of Representatives. When Reaganite Alex P. Keaton avoids a terrible fate because of his own selfishness, he has a nervous breakdown, but these days guilt and remorse are for RINOs.

Now, after months of minimizing COVID-19 as a serious threat, which cost lives and pushed frontline medical workers to the brink, Republicans are lining up for photo ops as they receive their COVID-19 vaccines. Just look at these assholes.

In October, Lindsey Graham refused a COVID-19 test before debate with Jaime Harrison even though he was exposed to… https: //t.co/K4PynwDCSH

— Daniel Uhlfelder (@Daniel Uhlfelder) 1608408809.0 

South Carolina's shame, Lindsey Graham, risked infecting the entire Senate with coronavirus so he could hold quick-service confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. He defended this reckless choice with blatant lies about how COVID-19 spreads. And even though he'd been exposed to colleagues who'd tested positive, Graham refused to get tested himself before his Senate debate with Jaime Harrison and Barrett's sham hearings because it was politically inconvenient.

Graham also grossly suggested that generous unemployment benefits during a pandemic would make nurses — heroes, every last damn one of them — too shiftless to work.

GRAHAM: If you're a nurse — aide — making $15 or $16 an hour, you're on the front lines here. A lot of doctor's offices are going to have to roll back because elective surgery's no longer a source of income for a bunch of doctors.

So, you're going to have all these well-trained nurses, they're going to make $24 an hour on unemployment. You're literally incentivizing taking people out of the workforce at a time when we need critical infrastructure supply for the workers.

Then there's this other asshole, Marco Rubio. He was among the first in line for some sweet vaccine goodness.

I know I looked away from the needle And yes, I know I need a tan But I am so confident that the #Covid19 vaccin… https: //t.co/vmMbrHUPUB

— Marco Rubio (@Marco Rubio) 1608390652.0 

(It's fine that Rubio looked away from the needle. It's important that people who are afraid of needles still get vaccinated. It's not something to stigmatize. Just because this is a post about assholes doesn't mean we should be assholes.)

 Attorney Daniel Uhlfelder tweeted that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is "a healthy 49 year old. He is not in a nursing home. He is not a health worker. He is not a first responder. He attends Superspreader events maskless."

Coronavirus cases are flooding Florida, and although Rubio has meekly advocated wearing masks, he never stood up to Trump's COVID denial or opposed Gov. Ron DeSantis's feckless leadership. 

Next up is Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who, as you'll recall, is perhaps the most famous asshole of all.

How it started: How it’s going: https://t.co/9yFXKyYNuR

— Sawyer Hackett (@Sawyer Hackett) 1608564804.0 

OK, I admit the leopard print mask is fierce as fuck, but that doesn't make up for when Ernst implied back in September that doctors were faking COVID-19 deaths for fun and profit.

ERNST: These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they're doing?

They are treating people who are dying from a disease and correctly recording the cause of those deaths. (If anything, we are likely undercounting COVID-19 deaths.) 

(No, Ernst never demanded that government outlaw vaccines. That was authentic "fake news." )

I'm actually not incensed that these assholes received early doses of the vaccine. We're not distributing them based on moral worth. My family in South Carolina will get their vaccines because they have brains in their heads and Kamala said so, but they are surrounded by Trump supporters, who I'd prefer just remain annoying and not plague carriers. If Lindsey Graham — as opposed to Joe Biden or Jim Clyburn — getting the vaccine persuades those dummies to do the same and promptly, that ultimately benefits everyone.

A solid chunk of the country still exists in an alternate reality where COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. President Pandemic doesn't help the narrative when he seems to get over the virus after a rough weekend, and his toxic ego demanded that he downplay how seriously ill he was. I appreciate anyone's help in the ongoing fight to convince Americans that water is wet and COVID-19 is deadly. So, thanks, I guess, you assholes.

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