Keeping it real with the president.
Now, I’m not here to rehash the debate over the COVID vaccine. At this point everybody has made up their mind over whether to get it or not, and whether to continue to get it (I guess there are people out there who are still getting it?), so it doesn’t really do any good to argue one way or the other. But suffice it to say, a couple years ago, the vaccine was a hot topic.
Of course President Donald Trump played a big part in getting the vaccine rolled out with Operation Warp Speed, and I remember back in 2020 when Democrats were claiming that they wouldn’t take the vaccine because Trump rushed it through without making sure it was safe. My how things change…
But anyway, they changed their tune after the 2020 presidential election, when the Joe Biden administration began mandating the vaccine and putting restrictions on the unvaccinated, which caused a lot of people to be skeptical of both the vaccines and the government’s motives for wanting to force everybody to get vaccinated. And the result was many people – on both sides of the aisle, but predominantly on the right – who refused to get vaccinated.
Then of course there were all the studies that came out showing the link between the vaccine and heart issues, especially in young people, that caused people to become even more skeptical. And of course the anecdotal stories dominated headlines and scared even more people off, resulting in the CDC estimating that around 30% of the population ended up not taking the vaccine.
The vaccine ended up not being a major political issue during the 2024 presidential campaign, because at seems like at this point it’s more of a liability even for Democrats: Can’t be reminding people that they tried to tell them they would die if they didn’t get vaccinated. (Remember when the Biden White House warned that you would be in for a “winter of severe illness and death” if you didn’t get the vaccine? Or when their hurricane preparedness tips included getting vaccinated? Fun – and by fun I mean ridiculous – times).
But even President Trump, who during the 2020 campaign was quick to brag about his accomplishments with Operation Warp Speed, seemed to stop talking about the COVID vaccine during the 2024 campaign. And John Rich recalls a conversation with then-candidate Trump over why the vaccine was so unpopular with his fans.
Rich was a guest on the Try That In A Small Town podcast with hosts Tully Kennedy, Neil Thrasher, Kelley Lovelace and Kurt Allison, the songwriters behind Jason Aldean’s hit song of the same name. And Rich recalled a private dinner with Trump and several United States Senators when Trump questioned why he was getting booed at his rallies for mentioning the COVID vaccine:
“He goes, ‘Can I ask you a question, John Rich?’ He never calls me John. ‘John Rich.’
I look at him and I go, ‘Yes sir, what’s the question.’…
He goes, ‘So here’s the question. Why are people booing me at rallies when I bring up the vaccine?’
This is the question from the President of the United States. A guy who is very proud at that moment of the fact that he was able to stomp the gas pedal and get that thing out because he’s under the impression this is going to fix the problem… I respect him to, there is no limit. But I’m being asked a very direct question.”
And Rich decided that he was going to shoot him straight:
“I said, ‘Ok, I’m going to tell you the answer, and you’re not going to like it.”…
I said, ‘Let me start out by saying this. We, the American people, do not trust the people that you were forced to trust at the time when this was happening. Let’s start there. By the people we don’t trust, here’s who I mean: The FDA, the CDC, the NIH, the WHO, Fauci and all the rest of them.’
I said, ‘Mr. President, we consider them to be a bunch of murderous depopulationist psychopaths.'”
The country singer says that Trump was “stunned,” but he felt that the best way he could serve the president was to be honest with him:
“I said, ‘Now, let me tell you why they’re booing you. Because all of them, including me,’ I said ‘I would boo you if you brought that up, and here’s why.’
And I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is the last time this guy’s going to invite me to anything. He’s never going to call me again.’ I’m throwing massive shade on a former president’s, in his mind, one of his biggest accomplishments. And it dawned on me, nobody had told the man what I was telling him right now. Because they all work for him, they all got something to gain from him, they’re not going to tell him this. Because they’re not serving him well.
I don’t work for him, and I think a lot of him, and I want him to understand the truth about it. So I said, ‘Here’s the problem. Here’s why they’re booing you, Mr. President. Because every human being out in that rally, either themselves or they know someone directly, who has been harmed by the vaccine or has even died from it, including me.
I said, ‘I got members of my own family who were forced to take it against their will to keep their jobs, and now they got all kinds of problems. Big problems. Heart problems, lung problems.'”
Rich said that Trump responded that it was “unbelievable,” and asked the others at the dinner if they had heard the same thing. And while then-Senate candidate and NFL legend Herschel Walker said he was hearing the same thing from people at his rallies, and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn agreed as well, apparently Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wasn’t a fan of Rich’s remarks to Trump:
“Lindsey Graham busts in swishing his Chardonnay around and says ‘Mr. President, if you listen to conspiracy theorists like John Rich the Democrats are going to take credit for what you did and they’re going to beat you in the next election with it.'”
Well after a testy exchange with Graham, Rich finished up what he had to say, and says that at that moment Trump decided he wasn’t going to talk about the vaccine at his rallies anymore. But Rich draws a strong distinction between the actions between the Trump administration and the Biden administration when it comes to the vaccine:
“The thing about Trump and the vaccine, Trump never mandated the vaccine. Trump said, ‘You’re all the doctors, go figure out how to make this stop.’ And he trusted these people that we now all know are a bunch of depopulationist animals. We all know that now, but he never mandated it, because mandating an experimental medical procedure violates the Nuremberg Code, it’s a crime against humanity. Which I hope we see that play out, because people need to be held accountable for that in a major way.”
And for the record, despite his concerns that his honesty with Trump would cause the president to stop talking to him, Rich said that hasn’t been the case and that in fact the exact opposite has happened:
“I think if anything, based on a couple things he’s asked me over the last year or so, he probably appreciates the fact that I’ll say something to him that he don’t really want to hear.”
Rich makes a good point about telling people what they don’t want to hear. Especially in country music it seems like there are artists who are surrounded by “yes men” who won’t tell the artist that they’re a weirdo or that their new music sucks. And it seems like a lot of people in politics are surrounded by those same kinds of “yes men” – until John Rich shows up to the party.
