Behind Trump's vaccine boosterism, allies see chance for political payoff

These allies don’t think there’s any downside to him promoting the shots and his administration’s efforts to accelerate their development in a GOP primary — one in which Trump would enter as the prohibitive favorite should he decide to run — even with surveys showing 30 to 40 percent of the Republican base declining so far to get vaccinated or saying they never will.“He has a right to believe in them and he's taking them and he thinks that other people should,” John Fredericks, a conservative talk show host and chair of Trump’s campaign in Virginia in 2016 and 2020, told NBC News. For months, former Trump administration aides had quietly been trading emails with one another, mulling how best to persuade him he needed to be more aggressive in promoting the vaccine among his core voters.Their concern was twofold: Biden did not seem to be making headway in coaxing Trump supporters to get vaccinated, and Biden's overall response to the pandemic in their view seemed to be lacking.“There were a number of former Trump administration people who thought it important that Trump take credit for the vaccines and encourage Americans to get vaccinated, especially when the Biden administration was incapable or unwilling to reach out to those people,” a former administration official said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. At his Saturday rally in Arizona, Trump praised a Supreme Court ruling against the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-test requirements for large workplaces and boasted of being "the anti-mandate president" who would "always" stand against such requirements.Plus, they argue, there’s always the chance that independents or undecided voters might reward him for using his megaphone to get a larger share of the population immunized.“He’s setting an example not just for his supporters but for the entire Republican Party,” Jerome Adams, U.S. surgeon general under Trump, said, adding, “He’s a major influencer and he’s going to add to that steady drumbeat of reasons that help people get over their fears and concerns.