During a speech at AmericaFest 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona, she declared she would not get vaccinated. “It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” Palin said. “I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”

Naturally, this elicited oodles of fake outrage and whining from the hard left, who wish desperately to force every single solitary person in the U.S. to roll up their sleeves and comply. Milbank, who is a master at whining, wrote:

By discouraging vaccination, she and Tucker Carlson and the rest of the anti-science right are quite literally getting people killed. Studies show that those living in the most pro-Trump counties in the United States are dying from covid-19 at a rate more than five times higher than in the most anti-Trump counties.

He continued, arguing that “[t]he Fox News crowd bristles at the notion that the Trumpified Republican Party has taken on aspects of a cult. But it’s looking more and more like a death cult, as my friend Sidney Blumenthal puts it.”

Milbank then goes on to make a nonsensical comparison to the people who died at Jonestown — individuals who committed suicide at part of the Heaven’s Gate cult. “But tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Republicans are dying unnecessarily from covid-19 because they refuse to get vaccinated,” he wrote.

He continued:

Blogger Charles Gaba, who has been tracking coronavirus death rates by county, reported Monday that since June 30, there have been about 117 deaths per 100,000 people in the reddest 10 percent of the United States (as measured by counties’ vote share for Donald Trump in 2020) — nearly six times the death rate of about 21 per 100,000 in the bluest decile. Likewise, the 100 million people who live in the most pro-Trump 30 percent of the United States had a death rate of about 98 per 100,000 since June 30 — more than triple the 30 per 100,000 among the people who live in the least pro-Trump 30 percent.

He then acknowledges a point that I will address in a bit. He wrote:

In the early days of the pandemic, those in urban areas — Democratic strongholds — were disproportionately likely to die from covid-19. That leveled out in January of this year. Then, the vaccines became available, and the delta variant struck. In August, there were more than 7 deaths per 100,000 in the reddest counties for every 1 death per 100,000 in the bluest. This month, Gaba projects there will be 5.62 deaths per 100,000 in the Trumpiest 10 percent for every 1 death per 100,000 in the least-Trumpy decile of America. (Gaba’s data is consistent with other recent studies.)

The cause of the disparity, which persists when accounting for age and health-care access of the different populations, is obvious: As of Dec. 20, among the bluest 10 percent of the population, 68.8 percent are fully vaccinated. In the reddest 10 percent, only 41.9 percent are fully vaccinated. The pattern is consistent through all deciles of the population: the more pro-Trump, the less vaccinated the population — and the higher the death rate.

The author then goes on to complain about Republicans threatening “to shut down the federal government to block a vaccine mandate” and “Republican-led states” that are “fighting mandates and even incentivizing people not to take the vaccine.”

When Milbank refers to people being incentivized not to take the jab, he is being deceptive. Some states have allowed unemployment benefits to those who are fired from their jobs because they refused to get the vaxx. This is not exactly paying people to remain unvaxxed.

I’m often fond of pointing out the best way to tell if someone actually believes what they’re saying is if they apply it consistently, and not based on political affiliation. Let’s take Milbank’s drivel for example.

He is claiming that conservatives who are hesitant about taking the vaccine are part of a “death cult,” and not individuals who have legitimate concerns about the injection. He refers to this as a monumental problem that is getting people killed.

But he doesn’t mean a word of what he says.

Here’s how I know: Black Americans are disproportionately less likely to get vaxxed. Report after report has demonstrated that African Americans are among the most hesitant when it comes to getting jabbed. In July, Vox reported that the vaccination rate is “15 percent lower for Black people than for white people in the US.”

The report also noted that Black Americans “make up 12 percent of the US population but only account for 9 percent of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Why hasn’t Milbank referred to Black America as a “death cult?” If there is anything the black community has in common with conservatives it is that they, too, are not on board the “vax it up” train. Yet, we never see Milbank or any of his holier-than-thou white progressive types schoolmarming black people for not complying, do we?

There’s a reason for that.

For starters, since these people love calling everyone racist, they know they would be susceptible to the same accusations if they were to dare call out black people for not getting vaxxed. But second, and most importantly, they don’t believe what they say.

There is absolutely no way they believe that an unvaxxed black person won’t spread the virus at the same rate as unvaxxed white people. The bottom line is that folks like Milbank want nothing more than to further politicize the pandemic and the vaccine. For them, this issue isn’t about health, it’s about scoring cheap political points. But was there ever any doubt that this was insincere?