The first sign of trouble began, oddly enough, in Alabama. In August 2021, Donald Trump headlined an event in the ruby red state he won by 25 points, and the former president briefly encouraged attendees to get Covid vaccines. As regular readers might recall, the booing was audible and immediate.
In December 2021, it happened again. The Republican appeared at an event in Texas, where he acknowledged having received a booster shot — a comment that again generated booing from his ostensible supporters.
By last summer, Trump had clearly been browbeaten into submission by his own base. During a rally in Alaska, the former president described vaccines as “that I’m not allowed to mention.” He clearly wanted to brag about his record, telling the crowd that “nobody else could have done” what he did, but the Republican nevertheless grudgingly concluded, “I’m not mentioning it in front of my people.”
As we discussed at the time, Trump clearly wanted to brag about the development of the lifesaving vaccines, reminding everyone that they’ve been enormously effective and deserve to be seen as a once-in-a-generation miracle. But he was also scared of getting booed by his own acolytes, so he avoided any explicit references to the “v” word.
This year, as the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination starts to take shape, the former president’s approach to vaccines has been overhauled. Instead of bragging about their development and urging people to protect themselves from a dangerous contagion, Trump is now trying to use the right’s hostility toward vaccines against potential GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The New York Times reported last week:
In a sign of how toxic the conversation about the coronavirus vaccines has become within the GOP, Mr. Trump’s allies are building a file of “opposition research” on Mr. DeSantis that consists of videos of him praising the vaccine in its early days.
When Trump spoke with reporters between recent rallies in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the former president added, in reference to DeSantis, “He promoted the vaccine as much as anybody in this country promoted it.”
Soon after Trump used his social media platform to call DeSantis “a RINO GLOBALIST,” before reminding voters that the Florida governor “loved the Vaccines,” as if that were a bad thing.
It’s worth noting for context that DeSantis’ line on Covid vaccines has followed a related trajectory: The governor supported the shots before moving in a ridiculous direction, culminating in his recent declaration that those who get the Covid bivalent booster are “more likely to get infected,” which is utterly bonkers.
But it’s Trump who’s scrambling to keep up, eyeing the vaccines developed on his watch as a cudgel to be used against perceived intraparty foes.
To be sure, the former president’s earlier efforts to take credit for the vaccines has long been a stretch. Before his shift, Trump practically made it seem as if he was a pioneer in immunology, singlehandedly saving millions of lives. In reality, he launched an initiative during a pandemic to develop and produce the vaccines, which is exactly what any president should’ve done under the same circumstances.
Nevertheless, this happened during his tenure, so the Republican could plausibly take at least some credit — that is, if he wanted to. But he can’t because the party’s base won’t let him. The partisan circumstances are familiar. As a GOP presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney thought he’d be able to brag about his state-based success on health care reform as his most impressive accomplishment — right up until that became politically untenable as “Romneycare” became the template upon which “Obamacare” was based. As a GOP presidential candidate in 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio thought he’d be able to brag about his role in negotiating a bipartisan deal on comprehensive immigration reform as his most impressive accomplishment — right up until that became politically untenable as Republicans rejected the Gang of Eight compromise as “amnesty.” And as a GOP presidential candidate ahead of the 2024 election cycle, Trump wanted to be able to point to Operation Warp Speed as his most impressive accomplishment — right up until that became politically untenable as Republicans turned against vaccines with a vengeance.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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