Trump explicitly rejected leading the US vaccine drive and is letting Mike Pence and congressional leaders do it instead
- President Donald Trump made a conscious choice not to lead efforts to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, the Associated Press reported.
- The president's aides are said to have wanted him to embark on trips thanking workers in the supply chain and boosting trust in the vaccine, but he passed.
- Vice President Mike Pence will instead be the center of attention. He was due to be vaccinated on live TV at 8 a.m. ET on Friday.
- Trump has indicated he will take the vaccine, but he has not set a date or said whether he will do it in public.
President Donald Trump actively turned down the chance to be the face of the US vaccine rollout, instead letting Vice President Mike Pence take center stage, the Associated Press reported.
At 8 a.m. ET on Friday, Pence and his wife, Karen, were due to receive injections on live TV in a move designed to bolster public confidence in the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. The US surgeon general, Jerome Adams, is also scheduled to receive the vaccine.
The public display comes a day after the US government launched a $250 million plan to support the vaccine, responding to worries that anti-vaccine sentiment, fueled by disinformation, might discourage people.
White House officials had wanted Trump to be the face of the vaccination drive, the AP said, but could not convince him.
The AP cited people familiar with the conversations as saying the president's aides had asked him whether he would make efforts to thank workers in the supply chain and boost trust in the vaccine, but he declined.
Pence made one of those symbolic trips Tuesday, touring a vaccine production facility run by Catalent in Bloomington, Indiana.
Declining to become a public face of what has been a rare US success in the coronavirus pandemic represents a change from Trump's history of claiming personal responsibility for the vaccine's development and his attempts to prevent his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, from getting any credit.
Aides told the AP that they were puzzled by the latest decision and saw it as a missed opportunity.
Trump has indicated he will get the vaccine but has not said when, or whether he would do it publicly.
Trump's reluctance to get vaccinated may be due to lingering concerns over the antibody cocktail he was given after testing positive for the coronavirus in October.
Dr. Vinay Gupta, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington, told The New York Times that Trump was in no danger from the vaccine and that there was "no scientific reason not to get vaccinated."
The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, told the AP that Trump's delay in getting the vaccine was because he wanted to set an example by letting those with higher priority go first.
"The president wants to send a parallel message which is, you know, our long-term care facility residents and our front-line workers are paramount in importance," she said.
She did not explain why the same logic did not apply to Pence.
Lawrence Gostin, a public-health professor of at Georgetown Law, told the AP: "It will be enormously damaging to public trust in the vaccine if President Trump isn't visibly enthusiastic, including getting his shot on national television.
"It simply isn't good enough to have Vice President Pence as a proxy."
Aside from Pence, numerous other prominent US political figures have pledged to take the vaccine publicly and said they would do so on TV.
Biden is expected to get the vaccine on TV sometime early next week, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Three former presidents - Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush - have said they too will be getting vaccinated and offered to do it on TV.
A group of senior lawmakers and Supreme Court justices will also soon be vaccinated, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
It said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be among the first.