Imagine this for a conundrum: Donald Trump, who has spent the past year trying to convince his supporters that COVID-19 isn’t nearly as bad as Democrats and medical science say it is, and who has also helped fuel the anti-vaxxer movement, now wants credit for having been in office when pharmaceutical companies developed a vaccination for that virus. Go figure.
Although claims that Trump referred to the virus itself as a “hoax” have been debunked, he very much has said that the idea that his response to the virus has been lacking is a hoax. However, 325,000 Americans are now dead, with the United States still included in the 20 countries with the highest mortality rate, and infections are soaring over the holidays.
According to PolitiFact, Trump told a rally crowd on February 28 in South Carolina that:
‘Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
‘One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was not a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.’
Trump also helped feed the anti-vaxxer movement with tweets prior to his presidency saying that vaccinations cause autism in children, a claim that’s been roundly discredited by medical science.
Today, there is a vaccine because of the same medical science experts who Trump has insisted for years are lying to us and actively trying to harm our children. Trump wants praise for that from his supporters, who have to feel at least a bit of shame in following his orders and praising him for a vaccine he didn’t create and that they don’t intend to take.
Twitter was quick to catch on to Trump’s hypocrisy. Read some of their comments below:
