This is an opinion column.
In August 2021, Donald Trump kicked off his comeback tour in the state where he first found his political footing — reliable Alabama.
This time he spoke not in Mobile nor Birmingham, but in a muddy field in rural Cullman County. The event was a lovefest of U.S. Senate candidates vying for his blessing, and a few foolish souls seeking his support to oust Kay Ivey from the governor’s office.
But Trump was there for Trump — and the thousands of supporters who braved the thunderstorm, some of them on metal rafters, to hear him speak.
The former president was rusty and out of practice, not quite delivering with the zip he once had, when in a curious blunder, he boasted of one of his legitimate achievements — expediting the development of COVID vaccines.
“It was three days less than nine months, and it’s great,” he said of Project Warp Speed’s turnaround.
But some in the crowd began to grouse. Trump sensed the shift and hedged a little.
“I believe totally in your freedoms,” he said. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
Cheers followed.
“But — I recommend, take the vaccines! I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines,” he said.
The cheers faded again and the awkward murmuring turned into outright booing.
Trump pivoted once more.
“No, that’s OK. That’s all right. You got your freedoms,” Trump said. “But I happened to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know. OK?”
Despite that weird stumble, Trump chewed up a field of hapless GOP challengers and has now outlasted Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race.
But Donald Trump still hasn’t gotten over his COVID problem, and you could hear it again, on the recorded phone call last week to independent presidential challenger Robert Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy has made vaccine disinformation his brand, and Trump wanted Kennedy to know it was his brand, too.
A video of Trump’s call with RFK Jr. was leaked - Trump talks about vaccines, tells RFK Jr. doing something with him would be “big,” mentioned his call with Biden and said the bullet was like “the world’s largest mosquito.”
— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) July 16, 2024
RFK Jr apologized for the leak. pic.twitter.com/Z6DQ955P6W
“Remember, I said I wanted to do small doses,” Trump said. “Small doses!”
The vaccines they give kids these days are doses like you’d give to a horse, Trump said.
“And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically,” Trump said. “I’ve seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact, right?”
It’s 700 miles from Cullman to Milwaukee, but Trump had moved a lot further toward vaccine denial.
It’s a shame.
We beat ourselves up, question officials, mock others and second-guess everything about our reaction our pandemic response. What gets lost in the noise: Overcoming the pandemic was a generational achievement on all levels — from the government’s response to the individual sacrifices made by millions of Americans.
We lost a million American lives but we could easily have lost a million more, and Americans — with the exceptions of RFK Jr. and a few folks who went bonkers on airplanes and in checkout lines — deserve credit for that.
Including Trump.
Including Biden.
It wasn’t a public health crisis only, but an economic one, too. We did something unthinkable — shutting down the global economy and restarting the engine cold — and it worked.
No one likes inflation, but you know what else no one likes?
Breadlines.
Because of the stimulus enacted, first by Trump and then by Biden, no one starved. Inflation has pinched us all, but few lost homes. Jobs lost were quickly regained and some traded up for new and better jobs. Today, wages are outpacing price increases again.
We should be proud of that.
Instead, Donald Trump is running away from this achievement and trying to pretend it never happened, or worse, that America’s recovery has been a failure to pin on Biden.
Remember, it was under Trump that lockdowns happened.
America is still recovering from a trauma, and Trump would rather use the anger and bitterness to fuel his campaign than to do what presidents should do — to give America the pep talk it needs, to pick the country up off the ground, dust its pants and put its glasses back on so it can see clearly again.
We did something spectacular.
And Trump is afraid to share credit for that. He’s still scared of those folks who booed him in Cullman.
Biden couldn’t bow out of this race with a speech on Sunday, because he is recovering, as many of us periodically do, from a bout with COVID. It’s something we live with now.
But Donald Trump still has a COVID problem. He’s trying to have it both ways with— his record fighting the disease and his struggle to keep anti-vax supporters.
When Biden recovers, he should publicly thank Trump for his part in America’s recovery, as well as his own, and with a wink, force Trump to make a choice.
And give Kamala Harris the gift she needs to finish this race.
Good ol’ American swagger.
