As the U.S. heads into midterm elections next year, the political right and the anti-vaccine movement are drawing ever-closer together — potentially at the cost of thousands of American lives.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The anti-vaccine movement and the political far right are moving closer together. For example, in October of this year, Donald Trump's son, Eric, spoke to anti-vaccine activists at a conference.

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ERIC TRUMP: We love the United States of America. It's the greatest country on Earth - greatest country on Earth.

CORNISH: NPR's Geoff Brumfiel explains what's drawing them together. And a warning - this piece contains strong language.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Eric Trump delivered his half-hour speech to thousands of people at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn.

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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.

BRUMFIEL: Some of his biggest applause lines came when he attacked the COVID vaccine mandates.

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TRUMP: Do you want to get a vaccine? Do you not? Do you want to be left alone or not? Do you want to own a firearm? So do I.

BRUMFIEL: This all sounded really different from what came just hours before. On the same stage, an anti-vaccine activist named Carrie Madej claimed the vaccines contained microscopic technology designed to turn humans into cyborgs.

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CARRIE MADEJ: They're trying to put another kind of nervous system inside of you, but - an AI kind. These are my hypotheses. I encourage you to do your own research.

BRUMFIEL: It's those sort of fringe views that kept political figures away from this conference in the past. But as America heads into an election year, there seems to be a magnetic energy drawing the political far right and the anti-vaccine movement towards each other. The promise is more power for both sides, but the cost could be thousands of American lives. To understand what's going on, first, you need to understand where the two sides are coming from. The anti-vaccine movement has not always been politically aligned.

DEL BIGTREE: The truth is, I'm still a registered Democrat.

BRUMFIEL: Del Bigtree is a major anti-vaccine activist. He's struggled to make his message appeal to liberals, but it seems to tap into something on the political right. He still remembers the first time he noticed. He was invited to speak about a documentary he'd written and produced at a conservative women's group in Texas. They loved it.

BIGTREE: Clearly, I was shocked as a lifelong, liberal progressive that I was, you know, hugging and hanging out and having a great time with a bunch of extremely conservative mothers and grandmothers.

BRUMFIEL: Bigtree has been banned from social media platforms like YouTube for making false claims about the dangers of COVID vaccines. But as the pandemic has dragged on, his conservative audience keeps growing. Often, he speaks at conferences alongside people who claim the election was rigged and promoters of QAnon conspiracy theories.

BIGTREE: Unless there's going to be a white supremacist, you know, on the stage, then - you know, or I find out that there's something that I truly find distasteful, then I see that stage as simply an audience that I want to have hear this message.

BRUMFIEL: It's a numbers game. He wants to grow his movement, and he'll talk to anyone who will listen. Now, on the other side of this alliance are far-right conservatives like Trump's former political adviser, Roger Stone.

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ROGER STONE: Most of you know my story.

BRUMFIEL: He was convicted of lying to Congress about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia and later pardoned by Trump. Stone was invited to this conference by anti-vaccine activists Ty and Charlene Bollinger. He sees vaccines as a potent wedge issue that can motivate conservative voters in the upcoming election cycle.

Do you think that, going forward, the vaccines are going to be something that people are willing to fight over?

STONE: In an enormous amount of public polling, which I think is honest - I mean, legitimate polling shows that it is. So we don't get to decide. We get - we read what the public is saying as a political strategist, and you have to respond accordingly. I think it is highly likely that this will be an issue in the 2022 elections.

BRUMFIEL: Vaccine mandates may be a good way to get out the conservative vote. It's a fight about the role of government and personal liberty. But add in the views of anti-vaccine activists, and that whole fight gets punched up to another level. Just listen to Del Bigtree.

BIGTREE: I believe that this vaccine approach, this vaccine itself, this brand-new technology is so incredibly dangerous that we are actually putting our species at risk.

BRUMFIEL: That kind of rhetoric, even though it's false, creates an existential crisis. It's this synergy between real politics and imagined dangers that's bringing these two movements together. But there's a side effect. Many thousands of conservative Americans are dying from COVID, in part because they're being pummeled with a lot of bad information about the vaccines. Liz Hamel heads public opinion research with the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care think tank. She says misinformation is now a major barrier to vaccination.

LIZ HAMEL: We find a huge correlation between belief in misinformation and being unvaccinated.

BRUMFIEL: And Republicans are on the receiving end of a lot of that misinformation, which comes to them daily through conservative media channels. Kaiser's polling found that 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about vaccine safety might be true. Hamel has watched over the past eight months as Republican vaccination rates have fallen further and further behind the rest of America. Today...

HAMEL: An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican and as they are to lean Democrat.

BRUMFIEL: To see the impact of this vaccination gap, NPR checked COVID-19 death rates against 2020 election results. The trend was clear. Since May, when the vaccines became widely available, counties that voted heavily for Trump experienced nearly three times the death rate from COVID-19 compared to those that voted for President Biden. They also had far lower vaccination rates. When asked about Republicans' low vaccination rates, Roger Stone said this.

STONE: Each person must make their own choice. God bless them.

BRUMFIEL: So it doesn't bother you? You're not worried about Republicans potentially getting COVID, getting sick, not having the vaccine?

STONE: I actually think that the - taking the vaccination probably enhances your chances of getting the disease, so I guess I'd be more concerned if I were a Democrat.

BRUMFIEL: That last statement is contrary to all of the scientific and medical data available. Stone also declined to say whether he was vaccinated.

ANNETTE MEEKS: He doesn't care if people are dying and he's spreading - pardon my French - [expletive] quasi-medical information. They don't care about that. They just care about winning. That - it's the worst element in American politics today.

BRUMFIEL: Annette Meeks is a lifelong Republican. She heads the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, a conservative think tank. Meeks has seen the data on vaccines, and she's watched people she knows get sick. She is worried.

MEEKS: To see people reject those vaccines based on pseudoscience or, worse, lies, and to see lives lost is a tragedy beyond words.

BRUMFIEL: But she also says embracing the anti-vaccine movement carries huge political risks for the Republican Party as a whole. That's because elections in states like Minnesota are won and lost in the suburbs, and suburban voters tend to be vaccinated.

MEEKS: I believe long-term consequences for the Republican Party will be a lot of those independent suburban voters will look askance at us and say, what is this all about? I got vaccinated. My whole family got vaccinated. And we're just fine.

BRUMFIEL: The risks for the Republican Party in lives and votes may be real, but there is little downside for the other group in this alliance, the anti-vaccine movement. Anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree says he's seeing more people at speaking engagements and getting millions of visitors to his website each week. He's hiring, expanding. And for now, his audience is clear - conservative America.

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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