The more the Republican Party politicized the pandemic, the more the public confronted unwelcome consequences. On Capitol Hill and across multiple states, for example, a variety of GOP officials began condemning vaccine mandates — not just related to Covid, but all vaccines.

For Donald Trump, whose rhetoric about vaccines has long been dreadful, simply condemning vaccine mandates isn’t enough. As the former president reminded the public at a rally in Virginia over the weekend, the likely GOP nominee intends to go considerably further if given a second term.

“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,” Trump said, reading from his trusted teleprompter.

Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman in the commonwealth, noted soon after via social media, “Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc. So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools.”

Quite right. In fact, this would obviously not be limited to Virginia: Across the country, public school districts require children to be fully immunized against, among other things, polio, measles, hepatitis B, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis before they can attend classes.

These policies have existed for years; they’ve been incredibly effective in protecting children and their families; they enjoy the support of public-health officials; they haven’t been especially controversial with anyone; and up until quite recently, assorted partisans didn’t think to make much of a fuss about it.

And yet, there was Trump, vowing to strip federal funding from “any school that has a vaccine mandate” — a vow that would effectively mean that a second Trump administration is prepared to cut federal support from every public school district in the United States.

To be sure, while the former president’s comments over the weekend sparked some renewed conversation, Trump’s rhetoric was neither accidental nor new. On the contrary, the Republican has repeatedly made this identical vow, word for word, for at least a year. In fact, in some instances, he’s clarified that this would apply to all public education, “from kindergarten through college.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatric molecular virology at Baylor, said online that he’s “hoping” that Trump “doesn’t really mean” what he’s threatened, “since it would create a public health catastrophe for the nation.”

And that’s effectively where much of the public finds itself when thinking about a possible second Trump term: The best case scenario for public health is that the Republican is just peddling nonsense for cheap applause, and maybe we’ll all get lucky and he’ll abandon his campaign promises after Election Day.

The alternative, of course, is that the former president is sincere about his plans, which would be vastly worse.