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Donald Trump – screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n
by David McLoone<\/p>\n
PALM BEACH,\u00a0Florida (LifeSiteNews<\/a>)\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Former\u00a0President Donald Trump passionately defended the experimental COVID-19 shots in an interview Wednesday, claiming that their creation\u00a0during his tenure is \u201cone of the greatest achievements of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n In a wide-ranging\u00a030-minute interview<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0The Daily Wire\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>Candace Owens, Trump\u00a0touched on a number of subjects, including the events of January 6, the 2020 presidential election, face masks, and the COVID shots.<\/p>\n Donald Trump: \u2018The Vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind\u2019 \u2018All three vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) are very good\u2019 \u2018The vaccines work \u2013 If you take the vaccine you are protected\u2019 \u2018People aren\u2019t dying when they take the vaccine\u2019\u00a0pic.twitter.com\/fU8q1sdMda<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Popper (@Kukicat7)\u00a0December 22, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n After acknowledging that Trump has been a strong supporter of the jabs from the very beginning, Owens asked the former president about his stance on mandating their use,\u00a0explaining that what once was a free option has now become a matter of\u00a0losing\u00a0employment for many people, including military personnel.<\/p>\n The former president stated his opposition to legally requiring reception of the jab, telling Owens to\u00a0\u201cforget about the mandates. People have to have their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he quickly turned his attention to the shots themselves, defending their rapid development and deployment as\u00a0\u201cone of the greatest achievements of mankind.\u201d He said the country would have suffered a similar fate to what was seen during the 1917 Spanish Flu epidemic, which he said killed approximately 100 million people and \u201cended the First World War.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere were no vaccines, there were no anything,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The president continued to boast about the timeframe in which the shots were developed, saying he\u00a0\u201ccame up with three vaccines\u00a0[Johnson & Johnson,\u00a0Moderna, Pfizer], all are very, very good. I came up with three of them in less than nine months; it was supposed to take 5\u201312 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Owens\u00a0emphasized that\u00a0\u201cmore people have died under COVID this year \u2026 under Joe Biden than under you,\u00a0but more people took the vaccine this year,\u201d calling into question the effectiveness of the\u00a0jab.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d replied Trump, \u201cthe vaccines work but some people aren\u2019t taking them. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don\u2019t take the vaccine, but it\u2019s still their choice.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said that he respects \u201csomebody not wanting to take\u201d the jab, giving special mention to those who object on religious grounds, but insisted that he is \u201cso proud of what we did with the vaccine, but it shouldn\u2019t be mandated.\u201d<\/p>\n Although recognizing that\u00a0\u201cthe mandates are killing our economy\u201d and that\u00a0\u201cpeople can\u2019t go to work \u2026 because of the mandate,\u201d\u00a0Trump refused to criticize the\u00a0shots, instead opting to encourage uptake.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of the vaccine. I\u2019m not going to give that up. Millions and millions of lives I\u2019ve saved.\u201d<\/p>\n Contrary to the former\u00a0president\u2019s assertions,\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0from the U.K.\u00a0suggests that the jabs have not contributed to ending the spread of COVID-19. Neither have the jabs proved to\u00a0significantly improve one\u2019s chances of\u00a0reducing hospitalization<\/a>,\u00a0but the measurement of success is in preventing severe symptoms of\u00a0the virus. Moreover, there is\u202fstrong evidence<\/a>\u202fthat the \u201cvaccinated\u201d are just as\u202flikely<\/a>\u202fto\u202fcarry<\/a>\u202fand\u202ftransmit<\/a>\u202fthe virus as the unvaccinated.<\/p>\n In addition, data\u00a0from Japan<\/a>\u00a0shows that young people are actually at a seven-times greater risk of death from taking the shot than they are of suffering death with COVID.<\/p>\n Furthermore, so-called \u201cbreakthrough infections,\u201d in which a \u201cfully vaccinated\u201d person contracts the virus,\u00a0are\u00a0on the rise<\/a>\u00a0in both the U.S. and\u00a0elsewhere.<\/p>\n The federal government\u202fconsiders<\/a>\u202fmore than 202 million Americans (almost 61% of the eligible) to be \u201cfully vaccinated\u201d (a\u202fmoving target<\/a>\u202fgiven the vaccines\u2019 temporary nature), yet data from Johns Hopkins University\u202freported<\/a>\u202fin October shows that more Americans died of COVID-19 by that point in 2021 (353,000) than in all of 2020 (352,000).<\/p>\n Still, Trump insisted that\u00a0\u201cif you take the vaccine, you\u2019re protected. The results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it [the virus], it\u2019s a very minor form.\u201d\u00a0He added that those who do take it, \u201care essentially immune [to COVID],\u201d and\u00a0\u201cwon\u2019t catch it a second time. It\u2019s a very strong form of immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople aren\u2019t dying when they\u00a0take the vaccine,\u201d\u00a0he added, despite more than 20,000 people in the U.S. alone\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0to have died after taking the COVID shots.<\/p>\n\n