Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly declined to acknowledge the documented side effects associated with the Covid jabs, even as evidence mounts that the shots were not as safe or effective as their manufacturers advertised them to be.
When conservative commentator Sebastian Gorka brought up the issue last Thursday, noting that some of Trump’s supporters want him “to distance yourself from the vaccines,” Trump changed the subject, pointing to the injections’ accelerated approval under Operation Warp Speed and his opposition to jab mandates.
“I have a friend who’s, believe it or not, he tends to be liberal and he said, ‘Why don’t you ever talk about the fact that you had the vaccines approved in nine months instead of 12 years?’ Five to 12 years they said it was going to take,” Trump claimed. “The big thing was there were no [vaccine] mandates.”
Similarly, in an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier last week, Trump pivoted away from the issue, again noting Operation Warp Speed and referencing a “Democrat friend” who told him, “You may have saved in the world, throughout the world, 100 million people, and you never talk about it.”
It remains unclear what data Trump is relying on to claim Covid shots saved 100 million lives — a contention the former president has made several times before.
Last week’s interviews weren’t the first instances of Trump sidestepping the shots’ significant side effects, either. The former president sparred with Daily Wire host Candace Owens over the safety and efficacy of the jabs during a December 2021 interview. In a January interview, Trump was asked if he would “acknowledge” the jabs “were not as safe or effective as we were told by the medical community at the time.”
While Trump avoided the issue in the former exchange, he tacitly admitted there were studies showing adverse events in the latter but appeared to downplay such reports. He shouldn’t.
Looking at the Data
Despite Trump’s avoidance of the matter, numerous medical studies have shown there are significant risks associated with getting the Covid shot that were not originally disclosed to the public — chief among them being cardio-related problems.
Last summer, 76 doctors sent a letter to U.K. health officials, urging the government to seriously consider whether to authorize emergency use of Covid shots for infants and young children. In their letter, the doctors pointed to several key points undercutting the rationale for the shots’ approval, including the low risk the virus poses to children, existing natural immunity, poor vaccine efficacy, and potential long-term harms from the jabs.
“There has been great concern about myocarditis in adolescents and young adults, especially in males after the second dose,” the letter reads. “The emerging evidence of persistent cardiac abnormalities in adolescents with post-mRNA vaccine myopericarditis … suggests this is far from ‘mild and short-lived’. The potential for longer term effects requires further study and calls for the strictest application of the precautionary principle in respect of the youngest and most vulnerable children.”
The letter was highlighted by Dr. Robert Malone, who helped develop mRNA technology and has been critical of Covid lockdown policies.
Concerns regarding myocarditis and other heart-related problems following Covid vaccination were also highlighted in a study published in October by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. In the analysis, researchers found “an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination” and noted that the “risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be weighed against the risk associated with COVID-19 infection.”
Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, cited the study when discussing adverse events related to the Covid jabs during a Fox News interview earlier this year.
Ladapo’s office also used the Florida analysis as the basis for updating its guidance on the shots in October, advising against giving them to 18- to 39-year-old males. Ladapo’s office issued similar guidance in March 2022 advising against offering the experimental jabs to children under 18 due to the “[l]imited risk of severe illness” posed by the virus, the “[h]igh prevalence of existing immunity,” and the risk of myocarditis, among others.
In December, the Florida Supreme Court granted a petition from Gov. Ron DeSantis to impanel a grand jury investigation into the shot’s manufacturers for potential “wrongdoing.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a similar investigation last month.
Meanwhile, numerous countries such as Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway have also recommended against “the distribution of the Moderna Covid shots for individuals under the age of 30,” with all of them “citing the documented risk of heart inflammation among young people” as justification.
Escaping Accountability
Make no mistake, any leader can and should look for ways to protect his or her people’s lives during a pandemic. Trump’s mobilization of Operation Warp Speed was undoubtedly motivated by such a desire, as he’s regularly indicated. It is highly conceivable that health officials lied to the former president as much as they did to the country. But whether it’s because he popularized figures like Anthony Fauci or thinks the shots’ benefits outweigh the risks, the former president’s refusal to acknowledge the jabs’ problems is providing cover for the very same entities that lied about their efficacy.
From the moment they were authorized for emergency use, legacy media, government agencies, health “experts,” and the shots’ manufacturers launched an orchestrated campaign aimed at convincing the public they came with no significant liabilities. “These data confirm the favorable efficacy and safety profile of our vaccine,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in response to the release of a company analysis that claimed the Pfizer shot showed “[n]o serious safety concerns.”
While receiving his first dose of the Moderna shot in December 2020, Fauci said he felt “extreme confidence in the safety and the efficacy” of the jab and “encourage[d] everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated so that we can have a veil of protection over this country.”
Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, went a step further. Not only did he market the shots as “safe and effective,” but he also told Baptist News Global they “[felt] like a gift from God” and encouraged church clergies to “play an important role” in getting people jabbed. He even advised the clergy to set up “vaccination clinics in their fellowship halls.”
Any of these entities could have informed the public that while they were confident in the shots’ efficacy, they weren’t fully aware of their long-term side effects. They could have further emphasized that everyone — regardless of whether they got the jab — was assuming a risk.
Instead, they treated the jabs as infallible, telling Americans to get them in order to “protect grandma” and get society “back to normal.” Even when reports began to surface documenting the jabs’ potential risks, the same people who spent years lying about the efficacy of lockdowns and mask mandates swooped in, all but telling people to bury their heads in the sand and act like it was no big deal.
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Holding Big Pharma and public health officials accountable for their vaccine falsehoods is a must. And Trump’s sizable influence among Republican voters could be instrumental in achieving it. Trump’s acknowledgment of the issue and a potential conservative response could give Republican politicos the push they need to investigate and punish these entities where appropriate.
Yes, glossing over the shots’ side effects may appeal to a large swath of the electorate who are likely unaware of such issues. But this isn’t about doing what’s politically beneficial; it’s about saying what’s true and giving America the Covid reckoning it desperately needs.
