In a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday, former President Donald Trump acknowledged that COVID vaccines have become a thorny issue among Republican voters, saying that “as a Republican, it’s not a great thing” to discuss “for some reason.”
When asked by Fox host Bret Baier about the efficacy of inoculations to combat the pandemic, Trump appeared to avoid giving a clear-cut answer.
“In your mind, did the COVID vaccine work?” Baier asked.
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“It’s such an interesting question,” Trump replied before filibustering with a story.
The former president, who in May 2020 announced Operation Warp Speed to facilitate the speedy creation of COVID vaccines, claimed that “a Democrat[ic] friend” has asked him why he almost never touts that successful partnership between the government and the private sector.
“He said you may have saved…throughout the world 100 million people and you never talk about it,” Trump told Baier. “I said I really don’t want to talk about it because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about because for some reason, it’s just not.”
“For some reason?” pressed the Fox host, whose colleagues have often pushed unfounded vaccine skepticism—including former primetime host Tucker Carlson, who once claimed that leaders were advocating for inoculations in order to achieve “social control.”
“Yeah. For some reason, because people love the vaccines and people hate the vaccines,” Trump said flatly, without elaborating.
In a Fox News interview in March 2021—around the time that one poll found that just under half of Republican men would refuse an immunization—the former president recommended vaccinations and called them “safe.”
“It works incredibly well. And it is really saving our country and it is saving, frankly, the world,” he said then.
Trump was also booed during a December 2021 public appearance after saying he received a booster shot, and was met with a similar response that August when he told an otherwise friendly Alabama crowd to get vaccinated.
Now a presidential candidate who is being criticized from the right on the topic by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump on Tuesday opted to stress that he gets why people “love” and “hate” vaccines.
“I understand both sides of it, by the way. I understand both sides very well,” Trump claimed before speaking negatively of vaccine mandates. “What I didn’t do is the mandates. The mandates and the vaccines don’t go.”
Trump then addressed DeSantis, who once praised the vaccines as life savers but has since turned to disparaging them.
“I never saw a guy that could forget the past so quickly because the past wasn’t that long ago,” Trump said. “Ron DeSantis literally had people lined up trying to get the vaccine.”
A few minutes later in the interview, Baier moved on to another topic: how Trump has said he wants to have convicted drug dealers, traffickers and smugglers executed.
Baier then reminded Trump that Alice Johnson, a convicted cocaine trafficker whom he freed and pardoned during his presidency, “would be killed under your plan.”
Trump appeared confused, after a moment replying, “It would depend on the severity.” Trump then tried to claim that Johnson would be fine under his proposal because it wouldn’t apply retroactively—apparently not understanding what Baier meant by the simple hypothetical.
Additionally, Trump claimed that his proposal was about deterrence. “She wouldn’t have done it if it was death penalty,” he said.
Towards the end of Trump’s interview with Baier—the first part of which aired Monday and included the Fox host pushing back against Trump’s false election claims—Baier asked the twice indicted former president if he thought he treated him “fairly.”
“I don’t know. A couple of questions could have been done without, but that’s OK,” Trump said. “I enjoyed it.”
