As Allahpundit discussed yesterday, Donald Trump has been on tour with Bill O’Reilly this week and both of them have revealed that they received a booster shot against COVID. Trump’s supporters remain loyal to him and they’ve been showing up at these events in droves. But at the rally in Dallas, Texas, something happened that is very rare at his events. When O’Reilly said that he’d gotten the booster shot, the crowd began booing him. He then asked Trump if he’d gotten it. When Trump replied in the affirmative, the crowd booed him as well, eliciting objections from the former president. What the heck is going on here? Is Trump losing control of his army of supporters? (Associated Press)

Former President Donald Trump revealed he received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of “The History Tour,” a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

“Both the president and I are vaxxed,” O’Reilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience, according to video shared online by O’Reilly’s “No Spin News.”

Here’s the very brief video of the exchange. After saying “don’t” a number of times, Trump proclaims that it’s only “a very tiny group” of people booing him. It’s always hard to tell when there isn’t a microphone trained on the audience, but I would have to agree with Trump. It didn’t sound like many people at all.

Just to keep this in context, the event in Dallas wasn’t the first time that Trump’s own supporters have booed him over comments he made about the vaccines. Back in August at a rally in Alabama, the same thing happened after Trump urged people to get the shots and saying that he’d done it himself.

I’ll just make two observations about this. First, the media is playing up this booing incident in a big way this week. That was totally predictable because most of them know that their ratings go up any time they feature a story about Trump and they also love any sort of story where it looks like people dislike the former president. But it truly does sound overblown because, as I said, it really only sounds like a comparative handful of people who are booing.

The bigger point, however, is that there really shouldn’t be anyone booing. This is supposed to be a debate over freedom, mandates, and personal choice. While I don’t consider myself “pro-vaccine,” I’m definitely anti-mandate. Being against the mandates fits in neatly with being a small-government conservative. But if you’re going to boo someone for simply saying that they made the choice to be vaccinated or boosted, you’re identifying yourself as a true anti-vaxxer, which is something else entirely. My wife and I both took the initial vaccines and were boosted last month. I didn’t do it because the government told me to. I did it because I consulted my doctor and researched the subject as best I could and decided that the risk was worth it in my personal situation. I’m obviously not an anti-vaxxer since I’ve had seven vaccinations in the past 13 months. (Two for the flu, two for shingles, and three for COVID.)

If you’re part of the crowd of boo-birds, put yourself in Trump’s situation. From a medical standpoint, while he always appears to be in robust health, the guy is 75 years old. A severe respiratory event could hit him quite hard. It’s true that as a vaccinated COVID survivor he has double immunity and probably didn’t need the booster as much as some other people, but why take the chance?

From a political perspective, why would Trump come out against the vaccines? He still correctly takes credit for setting up Operation Warp Speed and bringing the vaccines to the public in record time. If he starts casting doubt on their safety at this point just to please a small minority of his base, he undercuts one of the very significant achievements of his time in office. It just wouldn’t make any sense. All I’m saying is, let’s not cross over the line from opposing mandates to opposing the vaccine entirely. Yes, the mRNA technology is new and there have been some side effects. In due time we will know more as to whether or not there are any long-term issues with them. New, non-vaccine treatments for the disease are rolling out already. We should have the situation under control in short order and we can all just get on with our lives, assuming we can pry the authoritarians who are exploiting this situation out of office.