Last week, Donald Trump did the unthinkable: He tried to save his base from sickness and death. In a sit-down with far right firebrand Candace Owens, the former president contradicted his host, who of course has told her followers not to get the vaccine that could mollify the effects of COVID, particularly the far more transmissible Omicron variant. Trump said they should get vaxxed. His die hards were, of course, pissed, but Owens has a reason why he would say such things, and it’s not because he doesn’t want them to die preventable deaths.
“People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is,” Owens said in an Instagram video, as caught by The Daily Mail. “He comes from a generation — I’ve seen a lot of people who are older, have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct independent research. And everything they read to them that was in a newspaper that was pitched to them, they believed that that was a reality.”
That’s why, Owens argued, that Trump has difficulty finding those “obscure websites,” where misinformation about the pandemic spreads like wildfire, endangering all those who believe its lies. That includes Owens. “I have no issue with any person who wants to get the vaccine,” she tweeted on Thursday. “I just will never ever let that vaccine into my body. I believe firmly that Big Pharma is the greatest evil on the face of the planet. I am healthy, young, in shape and simply unafraid of Covid-19.”
It’s a strange argument, to say the least. Trump has routinely tried to discredit the press for accurately reporting on his many misdeeds, even popularizing the term “fake news.” One could argue he’s even created his own reality, where, among other things, he won the 2020 election that he lost by over seven million votes, and that his fiery speech before his supporters violently sieged the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was “extremely calming.”
During the interview, Owens tried to pin the blame for COVID deaths over the last year on Biden, not on people like her, who have spread misinformation about vaccines, leading to a present where the overwhelming of COVID-related deaths are among the unvaccinated. But Trump pushed back.
“Oh no, the vaccines work, but some people aren’t the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected,” he said. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”
For once, please listen to Donald Trump.
(Via The Daily Mail)