Jimmy Kimmel says Mike Pence doesn't deserve Covid-19 vaccine, prescribes 'BOTTLE OF CLOROX AND A HEAT LAMP' instead

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel quipped that Vice President Mike Pence doesn't deserve the Covid-19 vaccine and should be given bleach instead, the latest in a string of vitriolic comments from the party of "unity" and "healing."

Kimmel joked on his show Thursday night about plans for Pence and his wife, Karen, to be publicly inoculated on Friday to demonstrate that the new Covid-19 vaccine is safe. He noted that Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, wrote a Wall Street Journal oped article in June arguing that alarm bells over a second wave of Covid-19 infections was media hysteria.

"Maybe save that dose for somebody else," Kimmel said of Pence's vaccination. "The only cure Mike Pence should get right now is a bottle of Clorox and a heat lamp," he added, an apparent reference to false media reports that Trump suggested using bleach injections to cure Covid-19 patients.

The late-night host made no mention of the vaccine-worthiness of other public figures who have made erroneous predictions about the virus, from Dr. Anthony Fauci to Kimmel himself.

The mean-spirited joke was not out of character for Kimmel, who along with other talk show hosts has mocked President Donald Trump's administration incessantly for almost four years, but the tone was perhaps more biting than usual. It also came amid claims by Democrat President-elect Joe Biden that he would unify the divided nation and restore bipartisanship and civility in Washington.

Biden's own deputy chief of staff, Jen O'Malley Dillon, strayed from that theme in a Glamour magazine article published earlier this week, referring to Republicans as "a bunch of f**kers." Democrats defended her comments, in some cases on the basis of her expletive being accurate and in others accusing Republicans of feigning outrage.

New York Magazine called the reaction a "faux scandal," while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said O'Malley Dillon used the "right word" and blasted Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for complaining after saying nothing when a Republican colleague called a congresswoman a "f**king b**ch." Two days after the Glamour article was published, O'Malley Dillon said she had used some words that she "could have chosen better."

Twitter users said Kimmel's nastiness reflects where Democrats really stand on unity. "The left will always show us exactly who they really are," one commenter said. Another observer said Kimmel is among the "partisan egotistical train wrecks" who lack self-awareness as they spout "hateful, dividing comments."

As if proving that point, Kimmel fans defended the joke as accurate, agreeing that Pence doesn't deserve to be vaccinated. As one Biden supporter said, "Considering the number of deaths that Pence is responsible for . . ., I don't think he deserved to even have it offered to him."

Kimmel was criticized even by Democrats in May, when he tweeted a deceptively edited video to falsely show Pence appearing to deliver empty boxes of PPE to a Virginia nursing home. After being called out on the deception, Kimmel tweeted a snarky apology, suggesting that the video should have been OK because the Trump administration doesn't value truth.

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