Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged Sunday that she was inoculated against COVID-19 “months ago” — with the “Trump vaccine.”
Sanders, former President Donald Trump’s spokesperson from 2017 to 2019, also railed against the “misinformation thrown at me by politicians and the media” before making the call, she said in an opinion piece in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Just over 36 percent of people in Arkansas are fully vaccinated against the virus. The current positive rate stands at 11.34 percent in the state, according to Johns Hopkins University.
She blamed President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Health, for “misjudging” the “Trump vaccine.”
“What I found was simple: Dr. Fauci and the ‘because science says so’ crowd of arrogant, condescending political and bureaucracies were wrong about more than their mandates and shutdowns that have inflicted incalculable harm on our people and economy,” Sanders wrote in the op-ed.
Sanders credited Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” with coming up with the vaccines to combat the global pandemic, which has killed more than 600,000 people in the US alone.
“Based on the advice of my doctor I determined that the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh any potential risks,” she wrote. “I was also reassured after President Trump and his family were vaccinated.”
“If getting vaccinated was safe enough for them, I felt it was safe enough for me.”
Sanders, a Republican running for governor of Arkansas with Trump’s blessing, fell short of recommending to supporters that they also get vaccinated, calling it a “deeply personal” decision.
Conspiracy theories circulated by ultra-right conspiracy theorists, including QAnon supporters, have questioned the efficacy of the COVID vaccines for months — even as Fauci and others have continually urged residents to get inoculated.
A recent jump in cases due to a variant of the deadly pandemic has prompted many officials to urge — or at least suggest — that the vaccine is now a good idea.
“Recent data demonstrate that those Arkansans who are not vaccinated are at significantly greater risk for serious illness from COVID,” Sanders wrote.
“In fact, 98 percent of COVID patients currently hospitalized in our state and 99 percent of recent COVID deaths were people who were not vaccinated,” she wrote. “It’s clear that the Trump vaccine works and is saving lives.”