Trump Is Right About Politicians And Their Vaccination Status
Trump speaking in July, 2021. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a running joke on social media that the worst thing that can happen is for someone you can’t stand to be right, since that would require — according to the Uniform Code Of Interneting — that you react to that person you can’t stand and the thing they are right about in some creative way without losing face and/or your previous disdain for said party.
Sometimes, folks, we all need to just take the win and go with it when “someone I don’t like” makes an obviously true point. Even if that person is former President Donald J. Trump. And on the matter of public figures being upfront about their vaccination status, Trump is right.
Former President Donald Trump said that politicians who don’t disclose their booster shot status when asked in interviews are “gutless.”
He made the remarks on One America News in an interview aired on Tuesday night.
Host Dan Ball asked Trump about his comments encouraging people to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Ball cited the former president’s recent interview with Candace Owens in which Trump offered firm pushback against Owens’ anti-vax stance. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine,” he told her.
“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-effects.”
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.”
Donald Trump is right: every politician should have to plainly say whether or not they are vaccinated when they are asked and/or they are discussing related matters publicly. More to the point, the office holders, commentators, talking heads, and media personalities who are in the public discussing these issues should not only make their vaccination status plain, but should be up front about their reasoning for being vaccinated, or if not why for the public record. If you are using your position or platform to attack vaccines, spread conspiracy theories about them, and cater to an audience that really believes those things, that same audience and everyone else deserves to know if your immunization record matches the rhetoric coming from your mouth. If those public figures are being coy and using cute word games to not tell their followers their full status they should be pressed to answer why that is.
This championing of vaccines and the status of the rich and political famous being forthcoming about their taking the needle is not just altruistic, of course. Trump is right here, and being right about this allows him to take credit for being president when the COVID-19 vaccines came online. As Michael and others have pointed out, these vaccines and the technology and research behind them are incredible achievements on their own, and to be done under the pressure and need of a crisis makes them even more so. While the role of a president in that can be debated, being in the chair when such a breakthrough happens means you get to take a share of the credit. Dems the rules. That focusing on the vaccine part also allows the former president to duck and dodge his own — let’s be generous here and call it checkered — history of COVID-19 comments and uneven messaging on vaccines and other COVID-19 related matters is just a bonus for the former president. Of course, this is Donald Trump we are talking about, and his being correct here in no way inoculates him from completely contradicting all of this rightness at any given time.
But for now, for today, on this issue, the meme has come to life and a whole bunch of folks on the internet are going to have to live in a world — or at least a news cycle — where former president Donald J. Trump was right.
It’ll be ok, you can do it. I have faith in you.
Courage now.
How can you not link to the original joke? https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606/Report
An easy day for me, since I don’t like him and think he’s wrong. The personal doesn’t have to be political. People without a military record can speak about foreign policy; men can have opinions about abortion. I’d be less impressed by a politician who didn’t get a vaccine, but even less impressed than that by a politician who looked like he was trying to get points by saying he did get the vaccine.
There’s also the slightly different matter of leadership. But on 1/12/22, I wouldn’t consider it leadership to announce you’ve been vaccinated, outside of the impact on certain target communities. Current data indicates that a vaccinated delta-variant patient’s experience is comparable to an unvaccinated omicron-variant patient’s, and a vaccinated person with omicron typically suffers even less. Some of the regions with the lowest death rates are seeing upticks [edited: those are generally northern areas that have higher death rates in winter], and we have to watch out for that, but there’s every reason to believe that we’re coasting toward the finish line.Report
I am not sure we need to give Trump too much credit. Most of the anti-vaccination/COVID-denialism stuff is his to begin with and now he is trying to have it both ways. The GOP look like they could win big in 2022 midterms and this is despite (or because of) killing off a good number of people in their base. This is quite an evil parlor trick but it exists. Trump’s admin came up with a decent COVID mitigation plan in 2020 but then thought the disease was only killing those people in blue cities and threw it out the window. I’m not sure why civility requires giving him some brownie points now.
I await the comments from the usual suspects on how rude I am.Report
I also don’t think this is going to work. The GOP politicians are no longer toadying up to Trump. Trump was booed at a rally when he made positive comments on vaccination. A good portion of the GOP base are adamantly anti-vaccination and sticking to it. Look at how Cruz need to kowtow on Lord Tuck Tuck’s white power hour.Report
As one of the guys at the gym said to me when we were discussing an outbreak of a skin rash at said gym, “I don’t discuss my medical info with anyone I’m not legally required to.” Seems like a good idea to me. It’s no one else’s business. Politicians gonna hypocrite and lie, that’s a known quantity.Report
Hmm skin rash going around in a public space with shared shower/toilet facilities. At least no ones elses behavior will effect anyone else ( puzzled face with ” i got no idea” arms out) emoji.Report
“no ones elses behavior will effect anyone else” if the matts are properly cleaned. If you want to volunteer your medical info, feel free to do so.Report
I’d argue that not only is he right, but this is a potentially GOOD thing. If this encourages anti-vaxxers to abandon that idiocy, that is a good thing.Report
His own supporters keep booing him TO HIS FACE about it.
So…no.
He made this bed, he sold this bed, and now he’s like “You’d be crazy to lie in it” doesn’t, you know, change the fact that this is the bed he created and pimped like crazy for over a year.Report
“He made this bed, he sold this bed…”
And we know where he got the pillows from!Report
All evidence points to no. He was booed by his own supporters at a rally when he told people to get vaccinated and that he was vaccinated. The damages is done and cannot be undone.Report
A stopped clock is right once a day. Guess today’s Trumps day.Report
Right *twice* a day. (Or do you use 24-hour clocks up there?)
Recall when during the campaign he called Gulf War II a disaster? Admittedly, that’s obvious, and he lied about having opposed it at the time. Still, it’s nothing a mainstream Republican would have said at the time, and it has changed the GOP consensus away from neocon belligerence.Report
Good point.Report
More than happy to say Trump is right about this.
I notice that vaccine hysteria appears to override the Trump cult of personality.Report
He did literally spend a year telling them it was no big deal, got COVID, pretty clearly only survived because he got cutting-edge treatment no one else would have gotten at the time, walked out of the hospital, claimed it was AGAIN no big deal. That it would all go away, that it was a media hoax, that it was overblown, that it was just a cold, that everyone who said otherwise was lying.
And specifically that it was all Democrats behind all the lies, to make Trump look bad, to make him lose.
And they don’t believe it’s a big deal. And then the vaccines came out after he lost, so despite him trying to take credit (like anyone was against throwing money at the problem), his base didn’t listen because it was no big deal, Trump proved that — so why would they want a Deep State Big Pharma Democrat vaccine (that they also point out Trump invented) for a fake news disease?
Trump can switch from contradictory belief to contradictory belief in the same sentence of a speech, but his audience clearly…can’t.
Especially when the MAGA politicians are often still repeating those lies, while fighting vaccination (even as many of them are, of course, quietly vaccinated.)
A year of telling them it was no big deal and Democrat lies — why wouldn’t they believe the vaccine was nefarious, dangerous, or something bad? It was invented by Democrats to fix a Democratic lie. Clearly at best it’s simply some sort of scam, and at worst it’s 5G chips and sterilization injections.Report
Although, if we actually had invented a deadly virus that specifically targeted older, Fox watching rural Republicans we could hardly have done a better job.Report
No kidding, and after the vaccine came out it started really killing the unvaccinated.
A glance at the vaccination status of ICU COVID patients shows that. And while some Democratic voters have refused the vaccine, the partisan breakdowns show refusal is very, very, conservative leaningReport
And they blame China! Are we good, or what?Report
The blame China, Fauci, and liberals, while also claiming it’s a hoax, not a big deal, and the vaccine is far more lethal.
They’ve literally applied the classic enemy trope to a virus. It’s simultaneously incredibly lethal and ignorable. It’s dangerous, but you shouldn’t change anything about your life or get vaccinated because it’s not dangerous.
If you get it, you should drink bleach, eat horse paste, drink your own urine, get antibody therapy — but you shouldn’t vaccinate because THOSE antibodies are full of 5G chips.
I’ve seen the same people call it a Chinese bioweapon and a Democratic hoax in practically the same breath, while demanding the government DO SOMETHING as long as that something isn’t masks, vaccines, social distancing, or changes anything in any way whatsoever.
End if the poor sods end up in the ICU, they tend to either deny they have COVID until they die (while demanding horse paste) — or they start begging for the vaccine. Generally all while berating the staff that’s been working 18 hour shifts for two years to try to save their asses.
Oh, and generally in the hospitals of the deep blue cities they hate, that they wish would leave, because their rural ICU isn’t set to handle more than one or two people, so they’re all rushed to the cities to overflow those hospitals.Report
This is a fallacy, probably several fallacies. You’re taking every position that “they” have taken (or mentioned) at any time and implying that they hold to fall of them at the same time, and thus are contradicting themselves. It’s actually similar to the attacks on Fauci saying that he contradicts himself on masking.Report
And to think Killary Klinton is right there, hiding in plain sight.Report
I really hate to agree with him, but if you’re vaccinated because you value your own health, but express skepticism publicly because that’s the popular thing, “gutless” is the mot juste.Report
I think it’s all around a good thing. To the extent it gets anyone to vaccinate who isn’t that’s wonderful. Even better is if it creates a little intra-GOP disarray.Report
Trump continues to have zero problems with exposing himself to the public and doesn’t care about internal self-consistency.
He also takes a lot of credit for the vaccine and likes to showcase “his” successes.
I guess there is nothing new to any of this.Report