Last night, former President Trump was booed by some of his most devoted supporters during a rally in Cullman, Alabama when he had the temerity to suggest they get vaccinated:
Everything that we did, and then we developed a vaccine, three vaccines in three months, in nine months. And actually, I’ll tell you, it was three days less, three days less than nine months. And it’s great. And you know what? I believe totally in your freedoms, I do. But you got to do what you have to do, but I recommend, take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines, but you got… No, that’s okay. That’s all right. You got your freedoms. But I happened to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know, okay. I’ll call up Alabama and say, “Hey, you know what?” But it is working. But you do have your freedoms. You have to keep, you have to maintain that. You have to maintain that. And you got to get your kids back to school.
Trump then quickly pivots to mocking Dr. Fauci over masks and his inability to throw out a first pitch (something he is no position to talk about) before moving on to Afghanistan (again something he is no position to talk about).
With that being said, Trump made no further mention of telling his supporters to get vaccinated and I doubt he brings it up ever again. As it stands, Trump was tentative in suggesting they get vaccinated in the first place by qualifying it with "you do have your freedoms." Well, you won't have your freedoms if you are dead.
What I find amusing about this spectacle is that late last month, in response to Sarah Sanders' op-ed in which she claimed Trump inspired to take the vaccine, I suggested Trump should have taken his at one of his own rallies:
Mind you, Sanders tells us that she was reassured once she learned that Trump had received the vaccine. Wouldn’t have it been more reassuring for Trump supporters had he saw fit to be vaccinated live and in person? In which case, it might very well have been unnecessary for Sanders to write her editorial in the first place.
For Trump to get vaccinated privately and secretly is a rather curious move for a fellow who likes to put his name to everything from golf courses, hotels, steaks and universities. If it truly was the “Trump vaccine”, the former President would have made a show of it. Trump could have been vaccinated at one of his rallies.
Well, now we know that had Trump received his vaccine at one of his rallies he would have run out of town on a rail. The MAGA crowd is a monster he can no longer control.
Now Alabama is the least vaccinated state in the entire Union. One could make the case he wouldn't have received quite a harsh a reaction in another jurisdiction. But there is a direct co-relation between states vaccination rates and support for Biden/Trump. The only state in the Top 25 went with Trump (Florida). The only states which went with Biden not in the Top 25 were Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. All five of these states are swing states. The solid blue Biden states have a fully vaccinated rate of over 50% while the solid red Trump states have a fully vaccinated rate of less than 50%.
Despite Trump's claims about developing a vaccine, his supporters are the least receptive to it. So I believe Trump would have been jeered for calling on his supporters to get vaccinated whether he spoke in Alabama, Alaska, Ohio or Montana.
Of course, if Trump really cared about people getting vaccinated in the first place he would have called off his Cullman rally as the city had declared a state of emergency over rising COVID rates and hospitalizations.
But this is Trump we're talking about. Trump cares about Trump and getting people riled up. But when your marks stop listening to Trump it is a sign that his rallies are not only a super-spreader event of COVID but a super-spreader event of misinformation.
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