The conservative messaging on vaccines is, as always, tortured. Fox News and other conservative outlets agitate against vaccines and vaccine mandates, but then they realize they’re killing off their political base, so they do a wink and a nudge of “yeah but you should still get vaccinated, but just be really mad about it!!” So it is with Donald Trump’s post-presidency. He badly wants credit for “creating” the Covid vaccines, but he wants none of the responsibility for his mismanagement of the pandemic in its first ten months. Remember, the Trump White House had zero plans in place for a vaccine rollout. They wouldn’t even meet with the Biden people to coordinate on vaccine rollouts during the lame duck months. Anyway, Trump was in Houston recently, doing a discussion with Bill O’Reilly, and he got booed when he talked about getting a booster shot. LOL.
Former President Donald J. Trump, who for years falsely claimed vaccines were dangerous and pointedly declined to be seen getting vaccinated against Covid-19 while in office, was booed at an event in Houston after saying publicly for the first time that he had received a booster shot.
Mr. Trump was in Texas on Sunday as part of a speaking tour with Bill O’Reilly, the author and former Fox News host, when Mr. O’Reilly said that both he and Mr. Trump “are vaxxed.”
Mr. O’Reilly then asked, “Did you get the booster?”
“Yes,” Mr. Trump said.
“I got it too,” Mr. O’Reilly said.
The crowd in Houston began to boo, according to a video distributed by one of Mr. O’Reilly’s social media accounts.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Mr. Trump said, waving his arm to dismiss the naysayers and downplaying the size of the reaction by pointing to what he said was “a very tiny group over there.”
Just before the booing, Mr. Trump said that his supporters should get vaccinated because, he suggested, unwillingness to do so represented a victory for liberals. “What we’ve done is historic,” he said of the three Covid vaccines in use in the United States that were developed while he was in office. “Don’t let them take away, don’t take it away from ourselves. You’re playing right into their hands when you sort of like, ‘oh, the vaccine.’”
First of all, the booing is hilarious because Trump started this f–king death cult and now no one can stop it. These people are going to boo themselves into the ICU. Secondly, Trump is basically telling his moron supporters that they should not try to “own the libs” by refusing to get vaccinated, that the libs will truly be owned if they get fully vaxxed and boostered. Because it always has to be about owning the libs somehow to these people. It always has to be the winner/loser dynamic, zero sum game.
'You’re playing right into their hands' when you doubt the vaccine, President Trump says. pic.twitter.com/xJc7JTL0cR
— No Spin News (@NoSpinNews) December 20, 2021
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
I just read that Trump called O’Reilly whining after the event—his fee fees were hurt that he got booed.
LOL this video is so funny. “It’s just a small group over there.”
I would imagine that it would be pretty embarrassing to be disowned by your idol, but alas, these folks cannot be shamed.
The audience was a small group – ticket sales have been abysmal, so handlers move everyone from the nosebleed seats down before the broadcast starts, and they are very careful to only shoot the now-packed floor. TFG has delivered some more missives about how November 3, not January 6, was the real insurrection date, and that the totally peaceful, totally unarmed patriots in DC on January 6 were something something – I dunno, I honestly can’t decipher the code.
I view myself as relatively intelligent and relatively energetic, but I can’t keep all these conspiracies straight.
He started this with his ignorant a** and now this his racist death spawn fans are just living what he preaches.
i don’t know. making a bad decision about not being vaccinated seems pretty on brand for her.
That’s why I think Sarah Palin is lying about not being vaccinated. She knows the MAGA hats wouldn’t like to find out that she is.
For sure – I would bet money she is vaccinated and just lying about it to stay relevant to the base.
All the GOP politicians who were poo pooing it early on and crying about it being a conspiracy to oust trump were first in line when Congress was offered the shot. They’re all liars and hypocrites.
I absolutely think Palin is lying and is vaxxed. Another one is Candace Owens, I also would bet money she’s secretly vaxxed. Then they can yap “See? We’re not getting covid. You don’t need the vaccines.”
Candace Owens has repeatedly been spotted at events where proof of vaccination is required. She is vaccinated.
Oh Dr. Frankenstein can’t control his monster?
Right? It’s like the company that invented the machines in Terminator.
More like Theranos–just a big, long-game fraud.
He’s already Frankenstein’s Monster, in that his ego allowed him to agitate his fanbase to a frothiness beyond what the Koch Brothers had originally intended.
Sad to say that the booing makes Houston sound worse than Trump. The whole thing – antivaxxers, lies, hypocrisy, Trump, etc – leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Just a lone, apologetic Houstonian here to say that Harris County’s latest published vaccination rate (as of two weeks ago) among eligible (5+) people is 73.3% with one shot and 64% fully vaccinated. Not exactly Vermont numbers, but not awful. These dipsh!ts are definitely not indicative of the majority at all.
I’m guessing probably not from Houston but the surrounding more “Red” areas is where they get their audience. I live near one of those (very Red, Trump signs, etc) and yeah, the vaccination rate, and the COVID infection rate in those schools, even when they are lying about their numbers anyway they can, is still really high. Boy do I have stories from my own experiences and my friends about how much they try to lie about their numbers.
I’ve read that turn out is really low and they have closed off whole areas to move everyone together so it appears to be full.
That is what I read too! Something like 5K attendance for a venue that will hold 20K.
Bless his heart
*sips coffee*
In unrelated news, it seems Trump is genuinely panicking about two things:
1) Mark Meadows turning over his texts to the January 6th Committee
2) NY AG Tish James is circling
Trump sued James yesterday to stop investigation.
He’s just racking up more legal bills that he won’t be able to pay.
RNC is paying his all his legal bills. He was going to leave and start his own party until they said they would stop paying his legal bills and he could no longer sell his email list to other rep’s.
let’s just let Darwin weigh in on this, shall we?
This is hilarious. He’s getting bitten by the monster he helped create.
I hate him with my soul, but if this rhetoric gets deplorables to vaxx and save the lives of my family, the immunocompromised, and millions of good people, then fine. I just wish he had said it on Day 1.
FC, I hope it gets some of them to vaxx. I’ve been reading info that the two antiviral medications that’s been used since almost the beginning of the pandemic, don’t work with Omicron. And the monoclonal antibodies have an extremely reduced effectiveness. DeSantis might just want to change his messaging in the near future.
I’m sorry that you have the worry of immunocompromised family. I can’t even imagine how stressful this is for all of you. Keep as safe as possible, and I’m sending positive thoughts and prayers your way.
You gotta be a really vile person to lie about being vaccinated when you know it can up with someone dying. I’m glad Trump and O’Reilly admitted it but they are why so many people have died. I live in Florida and I hate our governor. He’s vaccinated but when I point that out to his fans, they say it’s about choice. He has them so snowed w BS.
I thought it was pretty cowardice of Governor DeSantis to not get publicly vaccinated, nor admit recently that he got the booster. But, he has decided it is in his best political interest to court the anti-vax crowd to further his career + his donors make $$ when he pushes for the monoclonal antibodies instead of vaccines. Amusing too, considering Casey DeSantis has breast cancer now — no way he would allow his precious Lady MacBeth wife to suffer. Obviously, he won’t allow his supporters to see the part where he is taking precautions to protect her.
What can you say? This Orange POS literally created this mess (making people suspicious of the vaccine) during his nightmarish time in Office. Hell, he got it in secret, and only later came out to say he was vaccinated. It’s the same hypocrisy with Fox News. Apparently their policy is even more strict than any Biden Administration mandates, and all their employees must be vaccinated/show proof before coming into the building. Do we hear that from those disgusting liars at Fox? No – they promote their anti-vaxx agenda because it continues their delusional message about the communist and socialist Democrats LOL! Someone really needs to give those assholes a history lesson, perhaps some political science/philosophy courses so they can better fucking understand what communism and socialism is, AND what it IS NOT!
All these people trashing the vaccine (as others have mentioned), like Palin, Fox News hosts, etc. have ALL gotten it. I can guarantee it. They just can’t anger their ignorant moronic MAGA base.
And Trump speaking up NOW? Too little too late. You had your chance, and you blew it in spectacular fashion.
The echo in that arena is deafening. It sounded like it was pretty empty in there.
2 losers who shouldn’t be Here anymore!!
I say that with only ONE Republican voter left in this country, Trump could still win. Consider: gerrymandering. Also, with all the Rethug lies about voting machines turning trump votes to Biden votes, don’t you think they’ve been working on the technology to make Democrat votes turn automatically to Republican votes in 2024? Also, voting laws that make it ILLEGAL to feed or give water to a starving, thirsty line of voters (this has already happened), having one voting center and one voting booth in predominantly black areas, a voting booth, hopefully with technical difficulties (like Kemp did in Georgia to beat his opponent), etc. Also, deleting hundreds of thousands of minority voters’ names off eligible voter lists for whatever pretext? Imagine laws that prohibit all mail-in ballots and reduce voting day hours in non-white areas to maybe two hours a day? In other words, NO AMOUNT OF FUCKERY will be negated by the Supreme Court or Republican-dominated circuit courts, etc. My God.