No. 3 Republican Steve Scalise Says “Shaming” Won’t Make Republicans Get Vaccinated

At this moment, the delta variant of COVID-19 is devastating areas in the South East portion of the United States. Not surprisingly, many of these states are led by Republicans.

But while those Republican voters want Donald Trump to get credit for the vaccine, they aren’t interested in taking it. Steve Scalise, the number 2 Republican in congress, waited 7 months to get vaccinated. Now the Louisiana Republican is saying people should be shamed into getting vaxxed.

Scalise told reporters this weekend, “I have high confidence in this vaccination. It’s safe and effective. And I think we ought to be encouraging more people to do it. But again, not shaming people who haven’t. We gotta be getting them information, encouraging people to go talk to their doctors because there is real hesitancy out there.”

The Louisiana Rep. continued, “What we need to be doing is encouraging people to get vaccinated, not trying to shame people who are unvaccinated or people that got vaccinated. I had antibodies, so I ultimately made the decision once I saw the Delta variant picking up, I thought it was important to get vaccinated.”

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Scalise closed, “We ought to be confronting that, not trying to divide people based on who is vaccinated and who is unvaccinated.”

Todd Neikirk

Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.