It’s a remarkable reversal for a president who once treated vaccine development as one of the signature achievements of his first term.
President Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic was riddled with misinformation and chaos. But amid that dysfunction, his administration launched Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that accelerated the development and distribution of Covid vaccines.
Trump called it a “monumental national achievement.” Even Joe Biden, who was running against him at the time, credited the administration when he got the shot.
Six years later, Trump is trashing that legacy as he courts the most conspiracy-minded factions of the coalition that put him back in office.
Earlier this week, the president signed an executive order that recommended a reduction in childhood immunizations, down to 11 diseases from 18 previously recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also recommends separate vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella instead of the combined vaccine known as MMR, which would make it much more difficult for working-class parents and those in rural areas to stick to their vaccination schedule.
It’s a desperate pitch to conspiracy theorists.
While touting the order, Trump made several wildly false and dangerous claims, including the lie that vaccines are linked to autism. It’s a desperate pitch to pro-Trump parents, the Make America Healthy Again movement and conspiracy theorists, all of whom distrust childhood vaccinations.
Doctors are urging Americans to ignore Trump’s vaccine order. Compliance with it would lead to reduced efficiency even if it was based in some sort of scientific reality.
Operation Warp Speed gave Trump something rare in his first term: a straightforward accomplishment. He could brag about having saved lives, pioneering a new model for vaccine development and hastening the country’s return to normalcy. A politician struggling with his current approval ratings might be looking for opportunities to remind the public of that achievement.
Instead, Trump is throwing it away.
Vaccine skepticism has become a core part of the MAGA-MAHA coalition, and Trump would rather validate the fears of that constituency than defend his own record or the science behind it. It’s part of a trend in his second term, which has encouraged conspiratorial thinking on everything from Joe Biden’s autopen to the John F. Kennedy assassination to the Jeffrey Epstein files.
There’s a real risk here. By giving the imprimatur of the White House to these outlandish theories, Trump elevates them in the political conversation and gives them new fuel to metastasize. He turns idle chatter on the internet into official government records and undermines the serious work of historians, scientists and prosecutors.
That is bad enough. But with his latest sop on vaccination to the conspiracy-minded, Trump is repudiating his own record, hurting his own supporters and putting the lives of Americans at risk.
Evan Brechtel contributed to this report.
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