Good shot, bad shot; depends who you ask

The revelation that Donald and Melania Trump were vaccinated during the last days of his presidency has resulted in a flood of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups demanding shots to protect them from the coronavirus.

Trump urged what he called “my right-wingers and other wingnuts” at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to “get COVID-19 shots as soon as you can to prevent the liberals from outliving us. We can’t let them steal the election that way because we’re not around.”

The reaction was swift among Trump’s supporters. Several thousand stormed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, insisting on inoculations, but were turned back by scientists spraying hydroxychloroquine.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Twofaced, who had tweeted on Dec. 22 that “I didn’t get vaccinated and have no plans to be,” insisted that “Twitter misquoted me. What I said then was that I have no plans to be not vaccinated. I couldn’t not be more clear about that.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Yucatan, said he had planned to get vaccinated as soon as he returned from a mercy mission to tuck his daughters Caroline and Catherine into bed, “but I drank from an airport fountain down there and it really flushed out my system on the flight back. No virus can stand up to their water, so I think I’m good.”

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Albino, keynote speaker at an “America First” event before attending the CPAC gathering, said outside the Hilton Orlando that he was getting vaccinated because “we can’t let them outnumber us. … Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get out of the sun because, well, you know.”

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Reichstag, noting that the Israeli government is opening leisure activities only to people who are fully vaccinated, said Trump had been “suckered by Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu into getting shots” and called it “just another example of the Jewish plot to make everybody in the world healthy.”

And Alex Jones, who peddles lies and stokes fears about vaccines on marginalized social media platforms, responded to the Trump revelation with an attack on Pfizer and Moderna. “I wouldn’t allow anyone to stick a needle into me with one of those Communist-inspired liquids. As God is my witness, I …” he said before being incinerated by a bolt of lightning.

Former Vice President Mike Pence apparently misread the invitation to the CPAC event and showed up wearing a mask for CPAP.