Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert appears to be getting jealous of all that sweet, sweet attention Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is getting … for comparing public health officials to Nazis.
Following President Biden’s announcement of a push to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, including by sending public health workers door to door to offer people information and the opportunity to be vaccinated, Greene proved decisively that her much-touted trip to the Holocaust Museum had been a photo opportunity, not a learning opportunity, describing public health workers as “medical brown shirts.” Boebert then followed suit.
“Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County,” she tweeted. “The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents. Did I wake up in Communist China?”
As a description of people going door to door with information to help people make informed decisions, connections to vaccination appointments, and in some cases the offer of in-home vaccination, this is blindingly dishonest. Polling and research has found that many people aren’t necessarily opposed to being vaccinated, but they do want more information or need convenience and reassurance that it won’t cost them anything. This is an effort to do just that.
It should not need to be spelled out, but just in case: Offering all people public health information and free vaccination can in no way be compared to sending people to death camps because they were Jewish. That is horrific.
But it’s also pretty special to have a Republican ranting about government coercion, when Republicans in state after state have passed mandatory ultrasound laws for women seeking abortions. Republicans routinely force women to have one medically unnecessary intimate medical procedure to be allowed to make their own health care decisions, so they cannot talk about “coercion” in this context.
As for the Nazi talk, this is a chance for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to show he meant it when, after Greene compared mask rules to Nazism, he said “Americans must stand together to defeat anti-Semitism and any attempt to diminish the history of the Holocaust. Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”
Your move, Kevin. Did you mean it? (Ha ha ha, yeah, right.)
All of this Nazi talk from the Trump uber alles crowd is also a little disconcerting in light of reports that Donald Trump repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler to the point where then-chief of staff John Kelly had to say, point blank, “you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.” Trump praising Hitler plus Trump’s most diehard followers constantly talking about Nazis is … a disturbing fixation to have surfacing in the Republican Party.
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