Donald Trump vowed at a rally Tuesday that if reelected, he’ll lower funding to each college with a vaccine mandate ― regardless that all 50 states have such legal guidelines on the books.
“I cannot give one penny to any college that has a vaccine mandate or a masks mandate,” he declared at his rally in Racine, Wisconsin. The gang went wild.
It’s a promise he’s made a number of instances in latest months, repeating the identical line verbatim at rallies in March and May.
If he adopted via on that, no college in the US would obtain federal funding. All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring particular vaccines for college kids, together with measles, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus, pertussis and polio. Exemptions to the rule differ by state, with California, New York and a handful of different states sustaining the strictest mandates.
Public well being specialists credit score these vaccine necessities with eradicating illnesses that when killed 1000’s of individuals a 12 months. Polio, a illness that contaminated, paralyzed or killed almost 60,000 American children in 1952 alone, has been utterly worn out within the U.S. because of mass vaccination packages.
JIM WATSON through Getty Photographs
Trump’s marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to questions on which vaccines he was referring to. Months earlier, his spokespeople said he was solely referring to varsities’ COVID-19 vaccine mandates. However he’s declined to make that distinction throughout his speeches, together with at Tuesday’s rally ― a call that panders to his celebration’s anti-vaccine crowd.
A rising faction of conservatives have begun questioning the protection of vaccines lately, regardless of the extraordinary scientific scrutiny they bear earlier than the general public receives them, and a dearth of proof that they’ve any lasting hostile side-effects. A Politico/Morning Consult poll discovered final 12 months that whereas vaccine skepticism was about equal amongst each Democrats and Republicans earlier than 2020, greater than half of Republicans now say they care extra concerning the potential well being dangers of vaccines than the advantages.
Although he as soon as took credit score for the event of COVID-19 vaccines, Trump has since scaled again his endorsement of them and vaccines basically. Final month, he even attacked unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the crucial distinguished voices within the anti-vaccine motion, as not being anti-vaccine sufficient.
“Republicans, get it out of your thoughts that you just’re going to vote for this man as a result of he’s conservative. He’s not. And by the way in which, he stated the opposite night time that vaccines are fantastic,” Trump stated in a video posted to social media. “He stated it on a present, a tv present, that vaccines are fantastic. He’s all for them. And that’s what he stated. And for these of you that wish to vote since you assume he’s an anti-vaxxer, he’s not likely an anti-vaxxer.”
