The former President was met with boos at one of his rallies in Alabama after recommending they get vaccinated.
After reassuring his supporters that he “believes totally in [their] freedoms” he goes on to say that he recommends “take the vaccines”.
The crowd, which consisted of mostly maskless supporters, then began to boo the former President.
Trump then resorts to using language which is popular among opponents of both mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations by telling the crowd “That’s okay. That’s alright. You got your freedoms”, while still insisting the vaccines are “good”.
“But I happen to take the vaccine” he goes on to say, “If it doesn’t work you’ll be the first to know.”
It is believed that Trump has been reluctant to run a pro-vaccination campaign, as he fears the position may be an unpopular move among his supporters.
The former President received his first dose of the vaccine in secret while he was still President back in January, a move which has been heavily criticized- most notably by Trump’s head of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar, who believes the vaccine rollout would have been far more successful had Trump been inoculated publicly.
According to an NBC Covid-19 vaccination tracker, Alabama is the state with the lowest vaccination rate in the US, while covid cases have been surging in large parts of the South as a result of low vaccine uptake.
