// More recently, he’s adopted extremist positions on covid vaccines, //
That is certainly troublesome these days, and obviously to be avoided at all costs.
It is illuminating to look at history and see some of the people accused by the powers to be at the time who regarded those people's views as "extremist".
It is interesting today that, people who are all in on one side or the other seem to cross the ideological boundaries more readily on vaccine related issues and be at odds with their bedfellows.
With conservatives, we often conclude that conservatives taking a traditionally Leftist position shows their foundational principles of independence and the power of the state are skewed, and they must therefore be lacking certain conservative credentials. We can often take this view, because it generally comports well with our idea of foundational conservative views.
However, it is also true that when a Leftist takes a view that COVID related restrictions on personal liberty are an overreach by the State, it is jarring to us on the right to hear it because Leftists so infrequently deviate from their own "talking points" that we can only conclude that that person's ox is the one that got gored. Their views are so much more inconsistent in that respect, that it has to cause severe cognitive dissonance in their case due to their more monolithic and less individualistic approach to things.