‘Politically calculated’: Trump confronts his RFK Jr. problem on vaccines – By Lisa Kashinsky, Kimberly Leonard and Brittany Gibson (Politico) / May 19, 2024
The former president is accusing Kennedy of being a “fake” anti-vaxxer.
Donald Trump’s long-fraught relationship with the Covid vaccine is again becoming a political liability for the former president as he tries to stop his voters from potentially defecting to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump is threatening to “not give one penny” to schools or colleges that mandate the Covid-19 vaccine. He is accusing Kennedy of being a “fake” anti-vaxxer. And he is rarely mentioning what he once touted as “one of the greatest miracles” of his presidency — his program to speed development of the vaccine.
Trump’s attempt to escalate his hardest-line rhetoric on vaccines — and his struggle to reconcile his past support for the Covid shot — is yet another sign of how seriously the former president is taking the threat of Kennedy’s third-party candidacy siphoning votes from him.
“Trump’s statements are clearly deliberate and politically calculated to negate the threat that [Kennedy] has become to him,” Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee Matthew Bartlett said. “Otherwise, he would be demanding a Nobel prize for Operation Warp Speed and taking credit for ending the pandemic.”
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