Trump Is Finally Telling His Supporters to Get Vaccinated, but It’s Probably Too Late—And It’s All His Fault

One of the most disturbing aspects of the rise of Donald Trump is the extent to which his followers came to believe that this carnival-barking, semi-literate, faux-successful businessman with five children by three women, zero relevant experience, and a reputation for f–king people over and being completely full of shit was (and remains) their lord and savior. Despite repeated evidence that they shouldn’t believe a single thing he says, Trump’s supporters have made it clear that they’re more than happy to buy whatever this bloated Jim Jones is selling. (If that comparison seems extreme to you, know that a person who was literally at the Jonestown massacre thinks it’s apt.) So it would stand to reason that if Trump had wholeheartedly endorsed getting vaccinated against COVID-19, members of his base would have been trampling one another to get a shot the moment they were available, as if the jabs were deeply discounted 62-inch flat-screen TVs on Black Friday.

Of course Trump chose not to do that. Instead, he got his vaccine in secret, and since leaving office in January has refused to do anything more than say during random interviews that he “would recommend” getting inoculated before quickly changing the subject; earlier this month, the Daily Beast reported that “despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers,” he’s repeatedly rebuffed the idea of mounting “anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated,” as it would be helping Joe Biden. All of which has unsurprisingly led to huge swaths of Republicans choosing not to get a lifesaving vaccine and outlets like Fox News peddling all manner of misinformation about vaccines, like that they aren’t actually necessary and are in fact liberal plots.

At some point over the weekend, though, someone must have drilled it into Trump’s head that things are really, really bad out there: The delta variant is absolutely ripping through unvaccinated communities and leaving numerous parts of Trump Country with nary an ICU bed, and “deathbed vaccine regrets” are now a thing. Because at a rally on Saturday, he did something crazy—he actually came out, in public, and told his supporters to get their shots. And then something perhaps even crazier happened, given how these people feel about him (which, as previously mentioned, is that he’s basically Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ were one of the worst people on earth): They booed him.

Per USA Today:

Former president Donald Trump was briefly booed at a rally on Saturday in Alabama after telling his supporters they should get vaccinated against COVID-19. Trump, who held a rally in Cullman, about 50 miles north of Birmingham, touted to rallygoers that the three vaccines—Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson—were developed in under nine months during his presidency. He then suggested that they get the vaccine.

“You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms. You got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it—it’s good,“ he said.

You can hear it here for posterity:

Obviously if we weren’t literally talking about life and death here, seeing Trump get booed by the monster of his own making would be a real delight. But since we are, it’s actually pretty terrifying. If he can’t convince his followers to get their shots, what hope do we have left?

As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake put it:

It was a sight to behold: Trump being booed at a rally by his own supporters. A look at the archives suggests that’s largely unprecedented, save for when Trump praised Tom Brady at a 2016 rally in Maryland. To be clear, this was a small portion of the contingent at the rally. It was also in Alabama, which is one of the most vaccine-resistant states in the country (current vaccination rate ranking: 50th out of 50 states). We often oversell the importance of the loud and passionate few in these settings. But this was still Trump getting heckled by his own supporters, which hasn’t really happened for a reason. Trump’s base has generally been all about the man, and less about the policies and details. But here, they didn’t like the actual details.

It was also merely the latest evidence that the monster that has been created, however much culpability there is for Trump personally, won’t go away quietly.

Trump never could have purged his party of all of its vaccine skepticism, but there is plenty of evidence he could have made a significant difference—if for no other reason than it might have sent a cue to some allies who have filled the vacuum by pushing dubious claims about vaccines.

Take, for instance, the reaction from Fox News after the FDA gave Pfizer’s COVID vaccine full approval:

Or the fact that, according to a report released by Facebook over the weekend, the most popular link on its platform from January to March of this year was “an article raising concerns that the coronavirus vaccine could lead to death.”

In other words, even if Trump has decided to start throwing his weight behind vaccinations, it may be too late. On the very same night he told his supporters to get their shots, he of course also told the ones booing: “That’s alright. You got your freedoms. But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know. I’ll call up Alabama. I’ll say, ‘Hey, you know what?’ But it is working. But you do have your freedoms.”

So yeah, for numerous reasons, f–k that guy.

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