Do none of you remember the pre-Trump era? Rick Perry got booed onstage for being pro-vaxx in 2012, he eventually recanted his position. In 2016, there were vaccine questions in the debates and nearly all the candidates had garbage answers. It’s pure bothsides-ism to say there’s anything like this in the mainstream Democratic Party.
Literally Ben Fucking Carson the only guy onstage without a completely terrible vaccination stance. But I guess Jill Stein is also a moron so both sides are bad, basically.
I do suspect that a lot of the LOOK AT THIS STUPID ANTI VAXX LIBERAL articles that framed the issue pre Covid were driven by the right’s domination of framing narratives via misleading social media.
I apologize for coming at you too hard, but I think you’re drawing a false equivalence here. There are fringe leftys who are anti-vaccine, but on the right it’s a mainstream stance. Also a lot of the vaccine development/rollout happened when Trump was in charge but that didn’t keep any of us from lining up to get vaccinated.
Trump had signed off on the plan that Fauci and Birx presented about the parameters needed to start lifting lockdowns and I recall thinking “this is a really solid plan, even if its Trump”. And then the next day Trump started talking about liberating Michigan and Virginia etc. But for a split second he had done something I could approve of.
It was pretty obvious that Trump was trying to rush vaccines to make himself look good, which is why Dems generally were extremely skeptical. He wanted people to take the eventual vaccine simply because he said it was great, not because there was proper testing, scientific consensus, etc.
Everything he did and said during the pandemic was purely for his own (perceived) gain. Even with the early travel restrictions, which were probably a good idea, you know he was overjoyed to find a reason not to let people into the country.
In the 2016 GOP presidential primary debates it was an issue. How non-mainstream could it be if it is an issue during televised prime-time debates?
You had Trump going on about vaccines and autism and Carson and Rand Paul steadfastly refusing to call Trump on it lest he go after them like Jeb. It was clear they knew better.
You’re right, Trump did say something like that in one of those debates. I forgot about that. Something like, many people are saying one day, they’re fine, then they get a vaccine shot and a week later they have autism. Look folks, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, I dunno. This is just what people are telling me.
It was a bit more. He then went on with some theory about how the problem is that kids are getting too many vaccines at once or maybe they should space them out more. As if people infinitely smarter than him hadn’t already rigorously studied all of those things.
I remember that magical moment when Ben Carson actually tried to talk Trump down from his anti-vaxx stance. So wild when Sleepy Ben is the adult in the room, but that was the state of the Republican Party circa 2012.
I can almost guarantee that if you look through threads from September or October 2020 there are posts of people saying they would be hesitant to get vaccinated if Trump managed to get the vaccines rushed out to help him get reelected.
I don’t doubt it, but I think those people are presuming some kind of obvious disreputable anti science narrative where Trump pushes out the vaccines in opposition to scientific consensus. Again, this isn’t a Both Sides, context doesn’t matter/exist, situation. Republicans are more anti-science than Democrats, by orders of magnitude. It’s not enough to say “but look over here, a Dem that said something that is potentially anti science adjacent”. That’s literally the dynamic that we ridicule when we say things are being Both Sides by bad journalists.
45 new posts in the trump thread?! Its happening.gif?! He got indicted?! Oh, nevermind, just arguing over who was or wasn’t more anti-vax than the next person. Lol when will I learn?
Lol JT. I like you, but you consistently take things way too personally. It’s far from unreasonable to see a bunch of posts in the trump thread and then be surprised when they are discussing how anti-vax Jill Stein or Marin County was.