In a very convoluted statement made on Fox News, Donald Trump sorta kinda encouraged some people to get the coronavirus vaccine, an inoculation he and his third wife got secretly in December when they still lived in Washington, DC.
As Politico reports, Trump told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, “I would recommend it. And I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works.”
The rather weak endorsement of the vaccine by Trump comes after polling shows that 50% of people who supported Trump said they would “never” get the coronavirus vaccine. Trump downplayed the dangers of the virus throughout his term or claimed that there was nothing he could do because the Obama administration “left the cupboard bare”–even though the virus hit the US three years after Trump took office.
While the first vaccine, from Pfizer, was introduced while Trump was in office, Pfizer didn’t participate in the development program touted by Trump. Moderna, the maker of the second approved vaccine, did take Operation Warp Speed funding to develop their vaccine. The Biden administration has stated that there were minimal supplies of the vaccine ready when they took office, but Biden has started an inoculation program that has seen the distribution of a 7-day running average of 2.4 million doses daily.