When I’m wrong I’m wrong. I assumed that after getting booed, Trump would give up his dream of winning the Nobel Prize for medicine for the vaccines and shut up about it. But instead, it appears that he sees them as a good weapon to beat his potential rivals over the head with. He appeared on OAN yesterday:
“Now after so many months of the vaccine being administered and these side affects, and Americans’ questions [sic] of it, do you reconsider your push for it? Or what’s your view on the vaccine in general?” Ball asked.
“Well, I’ve taken it,” said Trump. “I’ve had the booster. Many politicians–I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’ – because they had the vaccine – and they’re answering like–in other words, the answer is ‘yes’ but they don’t want to say it. Because they’re gutless. You gotta say it – whether you had it or not. Say it. But the fact is that I think the vaccines saved tens of millions throughout the world. I’ve had absolutely no side affects.”
The former president reiterated what he’d said to Owens, and stated that being vaccinated greatly reduces one’s chances of being hospitalized or dying from Covid.
“If they get it, they’re not going to hospitals for the most part and dying,” Trump said. “Before it was a horror. and now they’re not.”
Interestingly, some of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress have refused to say whether they’re vaccinated, let alone boosted. As of last summer, nearly half of House Republicans declined to disclose their vaccination status.
Additionally, Trump ally Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has refused to say whether he has received the booster shot. “I’ve done whatever I did,” he said in December when asked if he’d been boosted. “The normal shot.”
He wants that Nobel very badly. And he wants DeSantis taken out, that’s becoming more and more clear.
It will be interesting if he brings this up at the rally on Saturday. And if he does, it will be even more interesting to see how his crowd reacts.