Daily Beast: “It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers, the former president has kept refusing to mount anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated. As COVID-19 continues to rip through the United States, Trump has done little more than make sporadic gestures toward the vaccine, including when he said he’d ‘recommend’ people get the shot during a Fox News interview, while underscoring at the same time that he respected people’s ‘freedoms’ to not get vaccinated.”

“But Trump’s resistance toward truly pushing for people to get the vaccine hasn’t been from lack of trying from some of his allies. According to four people who’ve independently spoken to Trump about a potential pro-vaccine campaign, the former president has shown little interest in tying his name to broader efforts to get people inoculated. When asked why Trump hadn’t done more on vaccines, Stephen Moore – who previously advised Trump on economic and coronavirus-related policy – said he didn’t have a ‘good answer for that.’ Moore, a former top Trump surrogate, said that after he published an op-ed in The Hill late last month arguing that Trump should give a national primetime address with President Joe Biden urging his supporters and voters to get the shot, ‘especially because of the Delta variant,’ Whether Trump sees doing that as politically beneficial to himself, however, remains an open question – at best.”