Trump's Unnecessary Vaccine Foibles

The split between Trump and his voters was again exposed. Here's a big-picture look at the vaccine, a review of Trump's decisions, those of his past and present rivals, and what it means going forward

President Trump had been thankfully quiet of late when it comes to the merits of the COVID-19 vaccine. Enough instances of him getting booed at his own rallies when he brought it up finally drove the message home. But Trump still clearly believes in it. That set the stage for Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week.

Biden began extolling the vaccine and the wonders it will do for the world. Trump couldn’t contain himself. He went to Truth Social, his social media platform, and took credit for getting the vax done far faster than Biden presumably would have, and essentially gave Joe a sarcastic “You’re welcome.”

Normally I would insert the social media post in here so you could read it, but it’s gone now. The backlash came fast and furious. Truth Social, mostly filled with Trump supporters, unloaded on him to such a degree that he had to delete the post.

The response underscores that there are serious problems with the vaccine. Set aside whether you think the vaccine is dangerous—I do, but, as we’ll discuss, that’s a subject that requires some intense investigation. For now, just consider that the best-case scenario for the initial shot, plus what’s now up to nine boosters is that a virus in which you already had a 99.5 percent chance of survival, will be a little less serious than before. It’s not exactly what it was sold as.

Moreover, vaccine injuries are becoming the canary in the coal mine in this country. Pollsters have found results that show close to half the population at least knows someone they believe to have been injured by the vaccine.

Now, the fact someone believes something doesn’t make it true. But there’s no disputing the results coming from life insurance companies—that there is a drastic increase in premature death, and that the trend started in 2021 (when the vaccine came out) and not 2020 (when the virus arrived).

All of this is leading to a significant loss of public trust. The way to address it is real research and study, not spin and narrative control aimed at bullying people into silence. And not tone-deaf social media posts like the one Trump made last week. Big Pharma needs to be held investigated and held accountable.

The Missed Opportunity in Florida

It was December 2022, in the aftermath of Ron DeSantis’ historic landslide win in being re-elected governor of Florida, that a sign of hope appeared. DeSantis announced he was impaneling a grand jury to investigate Big Pharma for fraud. At last, an organization with real power—to subpoena documents and witnesses—could start getting to the bottom of what went down in the clinical trials.

Or so it seemed. Months went by and nothing happened. Social media warfare erupted between Trump influencers and DeSantis influencers in anticipation of the GOP presidential primary. Team DeSantis tried to use the vaccine as a cudgel against Trump.

I wasn’t unsympathetic—the empaneling of the grand jury had led me to leave the light on for DeSantis’ candidacy. It wasn’t until he backed down from an initial strong statement against U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine War that I just decided it was time to keep riding the Trump Train. But the vaccine remains the scab for a lot of us who support Trump. Would DeSantis really pick at the wound? Even after making the decision to back Trump, I was still hoping the DeSantis candidacy could apply some heat in support of vaccine truth.

DeSantis, like Trump, had supported the vaccine in its early days—even rushing to jab a 100-year World War II veteran on television as the first person in the state of Florida to get the shot. But, unlike Trump, DeSantis had pivoted and taken a more skeptical approach as the data rolled in. It was clearly his wedge issue to use with the GOP’s populist base.

But where were the grand jury indictments? That was a question I posed—a sincere question, not a combative one—to those who promoted DeSantis on Twitter, using the vax as their rationale. When could we expect to see a Pharma executive perp-walked for the television cameras?

The indictments never came. And the social media influencers for DeSantis, rather than make a reasoned argument about the Florida governor’s journey from vax supporter to vax skeptic, just wildly threw grenades at Trump and pretended their own candidate had been against it all along.

It wasn’t until after DeSantis dropped out of the race last month that the grand jury issued its findings. With the full scope of subpoena power and the prestige of being impaneled by America’s most popular Republican governor, the panel came back with this “groundbreaking” conclusion—that masking wasn’t backed by scientific data.

Are you kidding me?!?!? This is a conclusion any 12-year-old could have reached by this stage in the game. It led me to the inescapable conclusion that the whole grand jury was simply a political ploy for DeSantis’ presidential bid—get the favorable headline, and then memory-hole it. The potential voting group gets a juicy story for a day. But Establishment walks away with the win in the end.

It’s the way Republican politicians have long dealt with their base. Perhaps naively, I didn’t expect it from DeSantis. I had agonized for the better part of a year on whether to back him or Trump. The grand jury and vaccine fraud was at the top of the list on the DeSantis side. And it ended this way. At the risk of being overly dramatic, it’s not too much to say that Ron DeSantis broke my heart.

Trump’s Missed Opportunity

What’s frustrating about Trump’s own unwillingness to pivot and embrace a real investigation into the vaccine is that there’s actually very little he has to apologize for regarding the decisions made in the pandemic.

Yes, I was annoyed, even in the moment, that he kept sending Anthony Fauci to the podium and made him a national figure. But I understood why—I think Trump knew half the country already hated him, and that even those of us who didn’t, weren’t necessarily ready to make him our doctor. It was a mistake to elevate Fauci, but we know more about His Lordship with the perspective of history than anyone did at the time.

When you step back and look at the full scope of decisions, Trump’s actions were either correct or reasonably defensible given the context. Consider:

*Two weeks to stop the spread was a reasonable measure aimed at stopping hospitals from being overrun. What we knew about the virus at the time was that it was killing people across China and hospitals in Itay were dangerously overcrowded. Telling everyone to go home for a couple weeks—something not mandated by federal law, but simply encouraged by use of the presidential bully pulpit was hardly unreasonable. That states with Democratic governors went overboard into full-scale lockdowns is not on Trump—it’s on the voters who elected those governors (and then re-elected them in 2022). Places like Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, which chose wisely in their governor’s races, reaped the rewards.

*Trump was an early advocate of hydroxychloroquine and other alternative treatments aimed at early intervention. He was shouted down by the corporate media and the medical establishment. Even as recently as last year, at a meeting of our town’s Library Board, a member cited these ideas as the kind that should be banned from being read by the general public. But Trump was right. Early intervention, including Ivermectin, which I’ve used twice to great effect, could have saved lives.

*Trump was the first to say that the virus came from a lab at China. This was dismissed as a conspiracy theory at the time. Government agencies now confirm the truth of what Trump was saying from the start.

*Operation Warp Speed, as originally designed, was perfectly reasonable. The goal, according to Dr. Peter Navarro, an author of the operation’s initial charter, was to rapidly produce a vaccine that could be used to treat the at-risk population. It was understood that any vaccine done that quickly would be leaky, but for a limited group of people, it might be their best option. The goal was never to mass-vaccinate the general population while the pandemic was still ongoing.

*Trump negotiated a strong deal with Big Pharma. While it gave the industry the immunity they’ve had going back to the mid-1980s, there was a catch. For immunity to apply, the contract required that Pfizer and Moderna deliver a vaccine that was “safe and effective.” Lawyer Robert Barnes, who is currently representing Big Pharma whistleblower Brook Jackson, has said that Trump negotiated the best deal of any recent president with this industry.

*Trump then said during the 2020 presidential campaign that the vaccine would be available by the end of the year. The corporate media laughed at him. Fauci dismissed the idea. But he was clearly right. In fact, we know now that the vaccine was ready by late October. But Big Pharma delayed telling anyone, so Trump would not reap political benefit. The most likely explanation for this election interference is that the industry wanted a new president who would mandate the population buy their product.

*Which brings us to the big one. Trump never wanted anyone to be forced to take the vaccine. Yes, there were times I wanted him to be more vocal than he was on the subject.But whenever asked, he always said mandates were a bad idea. He’s gone on to vow that any military members forced out because of a refusal to take the vaccine will be brought back and given full back pay. He’s promised that any school that implements a vaccine or a mask mandate will be stripped of federal funding. On the issue that really matters to a lot of us—medical freedom—Trump, along with DeSantis and several others, have been aligned on the right side since Day One.

*Even the fact that Trump believes in the vaccine doesn’t really bother me. We all know plenty of people who got the jab. Why would that bother me? I’m sure all we know a few diehards who are still getting boosted at every chance. I won’t say I don’t worry about them. But my general reaction is just to hope they know what they’re doing, and then wish I could build a business that had a customer base as blindly loyal as the one Big Pharma has. Until we have more information, what else is one supposed to say?

So, to this point, Trump hasn’t done anything he has to make some major mea culpa for. Sure, you can quibble with some decisions here or there. But who among us has exactly the same perspective on all things COVID-related that we did four years ago at this time? It’s okay to let your positions evolve. Will Trump do this?

In fact, he doesn’t even have to go that far. All he really needs to do is to stand up and say that yes, he believes in the vaccine. But he’s concerned about the reports of injuries. He’s concerned about the increasing loss of public confidence in the medical profession, based on what they’re telling the pollsters. He believes that we have to get to the truth, and that—with due apologies to Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, we can handle the truth. And that he’s appointing a blue-ribbon commission armed with subpoena power to investigate and get to the bottom of everything. In other words, he’s doing what we hoped the Florida grand jury would do, only on a national scale.

If nothing else, it’s in Trump’s political interest to make this promise and follow through with it. We’re heading into what promises to be a close election. And while no one angry over a vaccine injury is likely to pick Biden over Trump, they have another alternative. DeSantis may have shied away from really picking at the scab, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not nearly as reticent.

The RFK Challenge

In the aftermath of Trump’s Truth Social post and the backlash from his own voters, some online polls started circulating, asking people if they would switch their vote to RFK—who has merely built his entire career by doing exceptionally well-documented work criticizing the pharmaceutical industry, and incurring the wrath of his family in doing so. RFK is now running in the general election as an independent.

My reply to the poll was simple—I’ve been through this enough times with Trump over the last eight years. He does things that range from annoying to indefensible, with this Truth Social post falling in the latter category. But he usually does something to make it right. And in the end, it all comes down to this:

--Between the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, and Trump’s status as the only post-World War II president to have never gotten us involved in a foreign war, he has preserved more human life than any U.S. president. Ever.

--He has done all of this at great personal cost. His fortune is now half of what it once was. He’s still walking through the fire of indictments and prosecutions that have no basis in law.

--He could have made all of that go away by simply not running for president this cycle, but still stepped forward, knowing full well what was coming.

--I think Trump is singularly best-suited to deal with the trifecta of existential crises this country faces—bringing an end to the escalation against Russia, negotiating peace in Gaza, sealing up our own border situation that gets more dangerous with each passing day and then undertaking the large-scale deportments that will have to follow.

Given all that, I’m voting for him. Hard stop.

But that’s just me. By indulging in vaccine nonsense, Trump is opening up a door to RFK that doesn’t have to be there. Is there any voter that Trump is reasonably likely to get, that is still some uber-believer in the vax? Even if they got the jab, and even if there are no regrets, what undecided voters are out there that just love the vaccine and are moved by Trump’s boasts? Just from a straight political perspective, I don’t see the upside here. And there’s plenty of downside.

The downside includes this:

*Rich Baris just completed polling the state of Florida. While Trump is on pace to comfortably win the state in November, Rich’s data started to show some hemorrhage of Trump vote to RFK—and unlike previous polls, RFK wasn’t drawing equally from both candidates. He was hurting Trump.

*Trump might have cushion to play with in Florida, but he doesn’t in Pennsylvania. Polling from Fox News this week showed that a slight Trump edge in the Keystone State turns into a dead heat if RFK comes into the mix. And with PA’s late-night vote counting being what it is, a dead heat basically puts the state in Biden’s column.

*My home state of Massachusetts is clearly not in play. But there are people who would vote for Trump over Biden but have never been comfortable with Donald’s style. These are also people who have a deep respect for RFK over his stance on vaccines—not just COVID-19, but his work exposing vaccine injuries and Big Pharma corruption that go back much longer.

RFK’s pro-choice stance on abortion is going to be a problem with this voting bloc. But in a post-Roe era, RFK has said he would leave abortion law in the hands of the states and not pre-empt it with federal legislation.

Let’s say you get some defections from voters like these. Maybe they don’t impact the Electoral College and Trump wins it anyway. But what if the defections cost him the national popular vote?

Before you say, “So what?” remember this—House Democrats are ready to use all tools at their disposal to block the certification of any Trump victory on January 6, 2025 (yes, I know the hypocritical irony is unbelievable, but that’s their right). If Trump loses the national popular vote, don’t you think they’ll cite that as a justification? In this election, every vote in every state counts.

It’s in Trump’s political interests to get behind a complete investigation into the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, if he simply announced he wanted to appoint RFK to lead that investigation, he would kill all his political birds with one stone.

How Our System Really Works (Or Doesn’t Work)

The hard numbers tell you the number of people who really believe in the COVID-19 vax are a dwindling minority. Booster shots are in drastic decline. People on the front lines of vaccine injuries, from Robert Barnes to Dr. Pierre Kory report not just the injuries, but the anger people are feeling at having been misled. Dr. Kory did a terrific interview with Tucker Carlson. It’s behind a paywall, but if you subscribe to Tucker, it’s definitely worth watching.

But the reckoning has not become political yet. That was evident in the midterm elections of 2022, when voters in places like Wisconsin and Michigan rewarded incumbent governors who selfishly ruined people’s lives with lockdowns in the fall of 2020, simply so they could do political damage to Trump. There is no noteworthy elected official that has been defeated over pushing lockdowns or the vaccine.

Are people simply embarrassed to have been had? In one sense, that’s understandable—none of us like to admit we were trusting people who proved unworthy of that trust. But in another sense, it happens to everybody. All the time.

The executives of Big Pharma and their compliant agencies, like the FDA and CDC, lied. Fauci lied. Medical journals, co-opted by Big Pharma, lied. Corporate media, dependent on Big Pharma advertising dollars, lied. Doctors believed those lies and pushed them onto their patients, all the while concealing the fact they were getting paid based on the number of patients they vaccinated.

This dynamic is the heart of the “Deep State” and how it operates.

It means even the people we elect as president and other high-ranking offices, can’t be in complete control. Those that control the flow of information are running things. No one is smarter than the information they have on which to make decisions. Not me. Not you. Not your doctor. And not the President of the United States.

I get why Trump believed what he was told about the vaccine. I get why millions of Americans believed it. In fact, while concern over doing a vaccine at “warp speed” was a part of my own hesitancy, the biggest reason I resisted is because of the use of aborted babies in the research process. In other words, it was a moral objection, not a practical one. And had that objection not existed, I might have gone along with the prevailing winds.

This Deep State apparatus of industry, controlled government agencies and compliant media is what has to be fixed. How to do that could be a book unto itself and this article is long enough already. But it has to start with two fundamental shifts in mindset.

The first comes from Trump—or whomever is seeking the presidency. They have to acknowledge they were misled and explain to the American public at least a little bit of how things work behind the scenes in Washington D.C. with its flow of information.

And the American public can’t go down this path of saying “The president can’t be making excuses!” or some other nice-sounding, but inaccurate soundbite that places the leader of the executive branch on some kind of Messianic plateau. Fixing the way this system works (or doesn’t work) is going to be a long haul and has to happen on any number of levels.

But it starts with this--we have to be ready to hear the truth about things really work and reorientate our thinking on how to deal with it.  And yes, we can handle the truth.