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A crowd of Trump supporters booed their icon after he told them to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
On Saturday (August 21), former president Donald Trump was booed briefly by a crowd of his supporters in Cullman, Alabama after he encouraged them to roll up their sleeves and get their dose of COVID-19 vaccines, a message health officials have been pushing since Trump left office.
“You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms. I do. You’ve got to do what you have to do. But I recommend, take the vaccines,” Trump said, according to The Hill. “I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines,” he added while receiving boos from the crowd.
“No, that's OK. That’s all right,” Trump said in response. “You’ve got your freedoms, but I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know, OK? I’ll call up Alabama. I’ll say, ‘Hey, you know what?’ But it is working. But you do have your freedoms. You have to keep –– you have to maintain that,” the former commander-in-chief said.
Alabama, like many states across the South, has low vaccination rates despite marking a surge in new COVID-19 cases. In July, Alabama Gov. Kate Ivey made headline after stating, “it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” as the number of new COVID-19 cases spiked.
Health officials point to the more transmissible Delta variant as the reason behind the rise in new cases and hospitalizations.
To learn more about COVID-19 and the vaccine, click here.
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