Biden antagonises right by congratulating Big Bird on vaccine status
Biden jumps into fray after conservatives rage at ‘Sesame Street’ star
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Your support makes all the difference.President Joe Biden jumped into a Twitter controversy on Sunday evening, while looking as if he was daring Republicans to launch further attacks on the subject.
The president’s Twitter account responded to a day-old tweet from an account run by the Sesame Workshop for Big Bird, the yellow Muppet star of the PBS Kids staple Sesame Street, congratulating the cartoon bird for tweeting that he had received a Covid-19 jab.
“Good on ya, @BigBird,” the president tweeted. “Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.”
The otherwise un-notable tweet came after hours of sustained outrage from right-wing pundits and figures in state and local governments, including Sen Ted Cruz, who complained that a tweet from the Big Bird account celebrating the Muppet supposedly receiving the vaccine was “government propaganda” for America’s children.
Those same conservatives have not held members of their own party to the same criticism for their own efforts to encourage Americans to get vaccinated. Many have resorted to spreading lies and conspiracy theories regarding the safety of the vaccines available in the US and the testing they underwent.
Good on ya, @BigBird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 8, 2021
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as one example publicly urged Americans to get vaccinated against Covid-19 as fast as possible in July, and notably did not face the same kind of heat felt by Big Bird after his tweet on Saturday.
“If there is anybody out there willing to listen: Get vaccinated,” Mr McConnell said at a press conference at the time.
“These shots need to get in everybody’s arms as rapidly as possible or we’re going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don’t yearn for – that we went through last year,” he continued, adding: “This is not complicated.”
Health experts for months, even during the Trump administration, insisted that getting a vaccine on the market and widely distributed was an important measure in the fight to get Covid-19 rates down to acceptable levels that would allow businesses and public life in the US to fully resume operations.
Many conservatives have however resisted both mandates and mere suggestions from federal officials for Americans to get vaccinated, while simultaneously stirring up anger towards restrictions on businesses and public life implemented to battle the virus’s spread.
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