For Donald Trump, COVID has become a four-letter word - The Boston Globe (2024)

“I think Trump’s biggest mistake — I hate to have him know that I say he made a mistake — was trusting [Dr. Anthony] Fauci,” Young said of the former federal infectious disease expert who’s been vilified by conservatives for promoting COVID shutdowns and vaccines.

But Young said Trump isn’t compounding that mistake by making another one — talking about COVID.

“I don’t think he wants to talk about it,” Young said. “It’s just too controversial.”

The deadly pandemic encompassed a little more than a fifth of Trump’s presidency, but you’d never know it from listening to him on the 2024 campaign trail. He rarely mentions COVID. When he does, it’s usually a brief comment that the pandemic derailed some of his presidential plans like an untimely speed bump. Then he’ll complain he doesn’t get enough credit for doing a great job on COVID — an assessment that most public health experts strongly dispute.

Trump publicly downplayed the threat from the virus in early 2020, a move he told author Bob Woodward was intentional to avoid creating a panic. As the pandemic took hold, Trump declared a national emergency and called for a voluntary national shutdown but soon was pushing for America to return to normal as the death toll continued to skyrocket.

He offered bizarre and dangerous ideas for avoiding the virus, including suggesting people inject bleach into their lungs. He shunned mask-wearing and social distancing, then survived arguably the world’s most high-profile case of COVID, before losing the 2020 election as public opinion polls showed voters trusted Joe Biden much more to handle the pandemic.

The one aspect of his pandemic response that Trump legitimately could trumpet — and gets bipartisan credit for — was Operation Warp Speed, the government program that accelerated development of COVID vaccines. But Trump has largely refrained from touting the vaccines since 2021, when he was booed at an Alabama rally and an appearance in Dallas after saying he had received a COVID jab.

“I really don’t want to talk about it because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about, because for some reason it’s just not,” Trump told Fox News in June 2023. In recent months, Trump has frequently vowed at his rallies that he would deny federal funds to “any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate” — a line that draws big cheers.

“His problem is he is personally proud of the development of the vaccines, but his core audience not only has moved on but is very negative about the experience,” said Robert J. Blendon, an emeritus professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has studied the public response to the pandemic.

Polls show Republicans trust the vaccine much less than Democrats and were more strongly opposed to the shutdowns and mask requirements. Even some of Trump’s high-profile supporters are critical of his handling of COVID and say it makes sense that he’s avoiding the subject.

“All I know is when he talks about vaccines at his rallies he gets booed,” said Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and ardent COVID vaccine opponent. “That ought to tell him something.”

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to email requests for comment. A Republican National Committee spokesperson did not directly address Trump’s handling of the pandemic but said in a statement that “four years after COVID, many Americans are still struggling” economically under President Biden, in contrast to Trump’s “record of success” as president.

Biden rarely talks about his COVID response either as polls show it ranks very low on voter concerns. But when it comes to his predecessor’s handling of the pandemic, he’s recently gone all-in.

Trump opened that door on March 18 when he asked on social media if Americans were better off than they were four years ago — precisely when COVID began rampaging through America. Biden’s campaign seized on the comment, creating an online ad criticizing Trump’s COVID leadership and posting almost daily flashbacks on social media to events exactly four years earlier.

“Four years ago today, Trump complained that inquiries into COVID test shortages were ‘a partisan witch hunt’ against him,” Biden’s campaign posted on X on Thursday.

And Biden himself has ridiculed Trump’s COVID response frequently in public remarks since then.

“When the pandemic hit, Trump failed the most basic duty any president owes the American people: a duty to care and a duty to respond,” Biden said at a Scranton, Pa., fund-raiser Tuesday. “Remember when he told us, ‘Don’t worry; this will all be over by Easter?’ Remember when he told us, literally, inject bleach?”

Americans are eager to forget about COVID, so it’s unlikely to be a major issue in the campaign, said Republican strategist Doug Heye. In his campaign for president, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tried attacking Trump for listening to Fauci’s advice and got no traction in the Republican primaries. But the pandemic still resonates with a lot of Republicans and could be a problem for Trump because of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s antivaccination stand, Heye said.

“That’s a potential weakness, especially as we all try and figure out whom does Robert F. Kennedy [Jr.] hurt more? Well, on that issue, potentially it’s Trump,” Heye said. “That may be 2 percent [of voters], but 2 percent could be impactful.”

Although Trump isn’t talking much about COVID, many in his party are — and the federal government’s response still angers them, said Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican.

“I would say it’s a focus of conversation daily as we travel around. People are insistent that we never do the lockdowns again,” said Paul, an ophthalmologist who declared he wouldn’t give his children the COVID vaccine. “DeSantis tried to make it an issue in the primary and wasn’t successful doing that. ... I think maybe people in the primary chose to vote for former president Trump for maybe a different reason than just the COVID. They might have actually agreed with DeSantis on it.”

At Trump’s April 13 rally, in front of several thousand people in a grassy field just north of Allentown, he didn’t even offer his usual brief mention of COVID during a roughly 65-minute speech. He simply repeated his vow of denying funding for schools with a vaccine or mask mandate, which drew its typical roar of approval from the crowd.

“He doesn’t want to talk about the vaccine. The vaccine was [expletive],” said Laura Hartshorne, 62, a real estate agent from Northampton, Pa., who attended the rally. “He was bamboozled. They told him it was safe and everything ... and he’s really not one to admit that they told him it was OK and it wasn’t.”

Bode Brewer of Reading, Pa., is only 17 years old. But after his July birthday he’ll be eligible to vote in November and is eager to cast his first ballot for Trump, who he thinks deserves credit for handling COVID.

“I think Trump’s biggest accomplishment ... and some conservatives are very split on this, is the whole vaccine thing [Operation] Warp Speed,” Brewer said at the rally. “Look, even the far left will admit that was very successful.”

He did not get vaccinated, but several older family members who were at high risk for COVID received the shot.

“We’re not against the vaccine,” said Brewer, who volunteered for Trump’s 2020 campaign and has been to 29 rallies. “We just want personal choice.”

Young, the New Jersey man who has attended 74 Trump rallies, didn’t get vaccinated either and recalls “screaming fights” with his family members about it. So he understands why Trump has effectively removed COVID from his vocabulary.

Young, who works for a debt relief company and does acting on the side, concluded, “It’s almost impossible to talk about it.”

Correction: A previous version of this story had an incorrect second reference to Bode Brewer.

Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.