Joe Biden Says Vaccine Hesitancy is Bunch of Malarkey: ‘I’ve Never Believed’ Large Chunk of People Would Refuse

President Joe Biden outed himself as a vaccine skepticism skeptic, telling Lawrence O’Donnell that he “never believed” that “there would be any large percentage of Americans who would not get the vaccine.”

During an interview for Wednesday night’s broadcast of Vaccinating America: An MSNBC Town Hall, O’Donnell asked the president about the politicization of vaccines, telling him “You’re coming up against something we’ve never seen before in any vaccination program or any public health program, which is a partisan resistance to vaccination.”

“This is in addition to other hesitancies that other populations have. But there is a partisan resistance, and that is among people, many of whom fail what is a basic mental competency test — who is the president of the United States? They actually get that question wrong,” O’Donnell said, and asked, “How are you going to convince them to get the vaccine?”

“They’re showing up,” Biden said. “All this stuff about vaccine hesitancy; the truth of the matter is more and more and more people are getting the vaccine.”

The president added, “And so, I’ve never believed that there would be a large percentage of Americans who wouldn’t get the vaccine.”

Biden went on to express that same skepticism several ore times:

But what’s the best way — you know, you used to do local politics a hundred years ago — what happens? When your neighbor gets a vaccine, your next-door-neighbor gets it, you say, well, maybe I should get it. And no matter what your position was, when you see people in a position where you can easily get the vaccine, you don’t have to go way out of your way.

That’s why you see I was on doing some meetings with folks who are providing for example and the governor of Maine, a Republican, is saying, if you want to get a free hunting license, come get a vaccine. Well, people are showing up.

And people are showing up across the board. So, the idea, I’ve never believed that at the end of the day, there would be any large percentage of Americans who would not get the vaccine.

Polls have shown consistent resistance to getting the vaccine among Republicans, but one recent survey showed in excess of 80 percent of Americans who were either being vaccinated or open to doing so.

Watch above via MSNBC.