The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake examines the boos at Trump’s Saturday night Alabama rally, first when Mo Brooks, desperate for MAGA freaks to have faith in elections again now the he’s running for Senate, and Trump himself getting booed for trying to push his fans to get vaxxed, noting the two assholes were just reaping the mania they themselves had helped sown, concluding:

“Getting those people on board with vaccinations is now much more difficult, because they have staked out their position – just as it will be very difficult to get people off the election lies now that they’ve been told ad nauseam. If your allies are telling people their democracy has been stolen from them or that an injection might be dangerous or unnecessary, it takes effort to combat that and counteract it. That effort has been almost wholly absent from members of Trump’s party. They have pretended they cannot do much besides give their own thumbs-up to the vaccine, even as colleagues like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) spew misinformation. They’ve pointed to their own more-circumspect comments about supposed election irregularities, while doing almost nothing to address or combat claims by Trump and his allies that go significantly further.”

“They are clearly terrified of saying anything that would create a rift in their party. They want to win elections and don’t need dissension. But Saturday night demonstrated how difficult it will be to combat the conspiracy theories that have infected the Republican Party’s base – particularly if Trump, who minds his base relentlessly, responds to the rebuke by backing away from vaccines. These conspiracy theories need to be inoculated against early on, before the virus can take hold. But sometimes the will to do that, it seems, just isn’t there.”