I'm seeing a depressing number of people -- probably the same people who keep telling us that unregenerate (but anti-Trump) Republican monsters like Max Boot are our allies now -- giving Tubby credit for "pushing back" on the anti-vaccine rap Candace Owens was dishing out:
During an interview with right-wing provocateur Candace Owens this week, former President Donald Trump actually pushed back on anti-vaccine talking points and encouraged viewers to get their shots. (Yes, you read that correctly.) After Trump boasted of his efforts in facilitating the COVID-19 vaccination, an obsequious Owens replied, “Yet more people have died under COVID this year, by the way, under Joe Biden than under you and more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how—” but the ex-president interrupted her to firmly declare: “Oh no, the vaccines work, but... the ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected... Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form. People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”
What the Daily Beast doesn't tell you, and what you only see much further down in other accounts, is that Trump reiterated that he's against vaccine mandates -- which are tied up in the courts and now headed to SCOTUS. He also bitched about masks!
In other words, Trump is still against the closest thing to a magic bullet we've got -- like, we didn't eradicate polio with a do-your-own-thing policy, we made it mandatory for kids to take before they could go to school.
What he's clearly not doing is trying to get his people to vaccinate. You think the kind of hardcore MAGA people who watch Candace Owens videos are going to be swayed by this? We've seen the rubes booing him when he pimps vaccines. They're not going to take it on his say-so. They'll just double up on the horse paste.
But when employers mandate the vaccine, the numbers show, people take it. That's what works. And Trump is against it.
In other words, Trump only approved the vaccines because they happened while he was president, and he wants to world to know that if anything causes the pandemic to diminish -- whether it's the new pills or the clearance of the mandates or anything else -- it's to his credit; and if it rages on (and without a serious "big government" intervention, it will), it's not his fault.
When I see centrist types giving him attaboys I have to wonder whether they're simple-minded. I mean, Trump and Owens are con artists. Haven't they been paying attention?
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