Former President Donald Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that he would recommend that viewers get the Covid-19 vaccine, despite polls showing higher skepticism and resistance among his own supporters.
Calling in to Fox News Primetime, Trump said, “I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and I lot of those people voted for me frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it’s a great vaccine, and it is a safe vaccine and it is something that works.”
Trump and wife Melania Trump got the vaccine in January.
Trump talked extensively of credit that he should be getting for speeding the development of the vaccine, telling Bartiromo that “this would have happened many, many years from now if I didn’t get involved and we didn’t get involved.”
A challenge for President Joe Biden has been to convince Trump’s supporters to get the vaccine, as getting control of the pandemic depends on achieving herd immunity. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has repeatedly raised questions about the vaccine, creating an atmosphere of doubt about their safety and effectiveness.
Trump, though, treated the vaccine development as one of his administration’s triumphs, telling Bartiromo “not only did we have the vaccine, and one thing we did, we took a big bet on this, we started manufacturing the vaccine before we really knew it worked. We saved many, many months and millions of lives by doing that, because you wouldn’t have the vaccine right now if we didn’t take that chance.”