Starting well before he ever got elected, former President Donald Trump had a talent for making his rallygoers boo. Just mentioning Hillary Clinton or CNN (or, near the end of his presidency, Fox News) would trigger a paroxysm of jeering from his supporters, who knew the role they played in punctuating his performances and happily did their part.
But at a recent rally in Alabama, the old script fell apart. Trump, after assuring the crowd that he supported “their freedoms,” said that he recommended they take the Covid-19 vaccine. “It’s good. I did it. Take the vaccines.”
The crowd, which had been cheering Trump up to that point, suddenly lost its unitary glee. A portion of the rallygoers started to boo, not with Trump but at him. “No, that’s OK. That’s all right. You got your freedoms,” he said, quickly seeming to recalibrate. “I just happened to take the vaccine.” That way of putting it was quite a concession from Trump, who once boasted that he was “the father of the vaccine.” Having touted it as “a medical miracle,” he was now forced by a crowd of his own supporters to shrug it off as something he just happened to take.
