Lindsey Graham said on Thursday that he has been pushing Donald Trump to speak up and press his supporters to get a COVID vaccine after the fully-vaccinated South Carolina senator was re-infected himself.
'I've urged him to be aggressive and say, ''Take the vaccine,''' Graham, a longtime Trump ally, told the Associated Press in his first interview since announcing he tested positive for a second time.
Graham indicated he spoke with Trump today and said the ex-president had been checking on him every day during his illness.
The Republican lawmaker lauded Trump's efforts in developing the vaccine and said Trump was 'very proud of that accomplishment.'
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Donald Trump called him every day to check on him during his second COVID infection (pictured here on July 30)
'From a conservative person's point of view, we should do all we can as a nation to get our economy back up and running and to protect our way of life,' Graham said.
Trump has not been shy about taking credit for Operation Warp Speed fueling rapid vaccine development, but has been murkier in his public opinion of whether Americans should actually take it - possibly wary of the skepticism large swaths of his base have show toward the vaccines.
He said on Fox News in March that he would recommend inoculation to 'a lot of people that don't want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me.'
At a Phoenix, Arizona rally in late July, Trump told a crowd of his supporters he felt some people were not taking the vaccine because they 'don't trust' President Joe Biden and stressed people's 'freedoms 100 percent' to do what they felt best.
Graham, a longtime Trump ally, has been urging the former president to come out stronger for vaccines as large swaths of his supporters appear to be skeptical (pictured on January 12)
Fully-vaccinated Trump has not made a strong public effort to encourage his supporters to get the shot (pictured at a Florida rally on July 3)
He echoed the sentiment in a statement a week earlier, declaring 'People are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust [Biden's] Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth.'
Trump himself was vaccinated in December after an apparently severe COVID infection in October.
Graham was also vaccinated in December, and despite his reinfection called the shot 'the antidote to the virus that´s wreaking havoc on our hospitals.'
He said he believed his symptoms would have been much worse had he not been vaccinated.
US COVID hospitalizations are climbing again in states with lower vaccination rates. As of Wednesday the state of Arkansas only had 25 free ICU beds left as more unvaccinated Americans are being hospitalized with the highly contagious Delta variant.
The current 7-day average for new cases is 66,606 - up 64 percent from the previous week.
The number is 480 percent higher than the lowest infection point in the pandemic, which was less than eight weeks prior in June, signaling the contagiousness of the new and most prominent variant.
Graham announced he tested positive after a party on Joe Manchin's houseboat and says 'everybody there was vaccinated'
Graham announced he tested positive on Monday, days after gathering with a handful of Senate colleagues on West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's houseboat. That same night, Saturday, Graham said he began experiencing flu-like symptoms.
Saying he felt 'achy and kind of yucky' through the weekend, Graham said Thursday that his symptoms had been steadily improving, although Monday and Tuesday were 'pretty tough days.'
'It went from sort of a mild sinus infection until just a full-blown, feeling like crap,' Graham said.
Graham declined to talk about the Manchin event on Thursday, except to say that 'everybody there was vaccinated.'
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is also pushing his former boss to be more vocal on vaccines.
Azar wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that he wished that Trump had gotten the shot publicly, so that his supporters could 'see how much trust and confidence he has' in the vaccines.
Recognizing that taking the vaccine might be a 'sacrifice' for some, Graham said the task paled in comparison with others that have been required of Americans in the past.
'No one´s being asked to go off to fight radical Islam or fight a foreign enemy. We´re being asked to make responsible medical decisions,' Graham said. 'Take the vaccine.'
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