In a long-form interview with Candace Owens on the Daily Wire’s premium podcast service, President Trump came out strongly in favor of all Americans getting some variety of the vaccine as well as the booster.

From The Hill:

“I came up with a vaccine, with three vaccines,” Trump told Owens. “All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years.”

Owens then said to Trump that more people died from the virus in 2021 than in 2020 even with the vaccine being administered to the public, taking a shot at President Biden.

“Yet more people have died under COVID this year,” Owens told Trump. “By the way, under Joe Biden, than under you and more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how—”

“Oh no, the vaccines work, but some people aren’t the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected,” Trump told Owens.

“Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form,” Trump continued. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

My critique of the vaccines is not based on who initiated their development. My view is that unlike vaccines we are used to taking to protect us from disease, these can only reduce the effects of the virus in most people. There is little evidence that the current array of vaccines or boosters does very much against the emerging strains. As people with the vaccine can both catch and spread the virus, one has to question exactly the value of mass vaccination schemes for any venue other than places with large numbers of vulnerable people, like nursing homes. The bullying and demonizing of people who refuse to take the vaccine have made me an opponent.

That said, there is something curious afoot. On Sunday, President Trump was in Dallas. There, he made an impassioned defense of the vaccine and told his supporters they should take credit for it. He did so in much the same terms as he does with Candace Owens. See The Democrats Have so Thoroughly Poisoned the Well With the COVID Vaccine and Booster That Even President Trump Gets Booed Trying to Sell It.

On Tuesday, Joey SoftServe gave President Trump some credit for his work on the vaccine.

Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America was one of the first countries to get the vaccine.

This also appeared the same day.

Dr. Fauci is “very pleased” that Trump cheerfully promoted his booster shot to his vaccine-skeptic fans, to MAGA boos

Bill O'Reilly also admitted to getting the booster.

Fox News' Jesse Watters said Fauci should face a “kill shot” for his pandemic work.https://t.co/eHrauu9jS1

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 21, 2021

On Fox News that same night, President Trump expressed his gratitude to Biden for acknowledging the obvious.

I’m very appreciative of that — I was surprised to hear it. I think it was a terrific thing, and I think it makes a lot of people happy.

I think he did something very good. You know, it has to be a process of healing in this country, and that will help a lot.

When we came up with these incredible vaccines — three of them — and therapeutics, we did a tremendous job, and we should never disparage them. We should be really happy about it because we’ve all saved millions and millions of lives all over the world.

The “process of healing” is moved forward by Biden giving President Trump credit for something? I’m not really sure how that works.

Then we have the Candace Owens interview.

Call me cynical, but I think the White House is using President Trump’s ego and wounded pride to play him. They didn’t praise him over the vaccine out of the blue. There is a plan of some sort involved. President Trump wants public credit for developing the vaccine in very short order. That is understandable. I think President Trump is not taking into consideration that his supporters are already beyond the vaccine, assuming they were ever with it. Most of us don’t want credit for the vaccine. A goodly number of us see the vaccine as the gateway drug to a permanent erosion of civil liberties in the name of “public health.”

The quickest way for the Democrats to throw the GOP into disarray in an election year is by neutering the GOP’s most effective campaigner and the head of the party-in-exile. My advice to President Trump would be to acknowledge the vaccine but hammer the issue of the mandate and the emerging safety issues with the vaccine.

The bottom line is that if President Trump is interested in having an impact in 2022 and mounting a presidential run in 2024, he needs to remember who he is dealing with and who “brung” him to the dance.