Ivanka Trump Is Back—and Vaccinated, Much to Her Followers' Chagrin

Ivanka Trump has been MIA since President Biden’s inauguration, an unofficial social media detox that’s jarring after years of her regular posts about everything from her now-defunct fashion line to her vanity role as her father’s senior advisor during his blessedly short tenure as president. Paparazzi shots have given us some idea of what she’s been up to: Retreating with the rest of the Trump clan to Florida for some quality time with the family and workout sessions with her husband, haunted Victorian doll Jared Kushner.

But now, she’s back, and vaccinated, to the chagrin of her many followers.

On Wednesday, Trump posted her first social media update in almost three months, featuring a photo of herself getting vaccinated against covid-19. Her caption read. “Today, I got the shot!!! I hope that you do too! Thank you Nurse Torres!!! ”

The post has received over 400,000 likes on Instagram, but the nearly 30,000 comments were riddled with betrayal and anti-vax sentiments.

“No thank you! I have immune system for a reason,” read one comment with over 3,000 likes. Another, boasting more than 5,000 likes reads, “Bummer. I was hoping you were above this kind of virtue signaling.”

Jodie Meschuk, an anti-vax influencer who believes in “autism reversal,” left a series of replies: “No thanks. I don’t need transhumanism”; “why the hell are we sharing our personal medical confidentiality for display? did you get a pap too?”; “Severely disappointed in you adding to the shaming of those who choose to decline.”

Other comments were less verbose: “Hard pass,” “No thank you,” “Why would you post this?”

None of this is surprising: In March, a CBS News poll found that 34 percent of Republicans reported that they have no intention of getting vaccinated against covid-19. (Only 10 percent of Democrats plan to abstain from the vaccine.) Findings from a PBS Newshour/NPR/Maris poll suggested that a a higher number—at least 41 percent of Republicans—will refuse to get the covid-19 vaccine. While anti-vax right-wing women might be some of the loudest voices online, data shows Republican men are the biggest resisters, with 49 percent saying they will not get the vaccine versus 34 percent of Republican women. And according to a new survey from Quinnipiac University, a whopping 45 percent of Republicans said they do not plan to get vaccinated.

But this is the audience Ivanka Trump has cultivated: A variety of anti-vax reactionaries who are doing their part in prolonging a global pandemic that has killed 564,000 Americans. She made her bed, now she has to lie in it, cooties and all.