Former President Donald Trump has revealed that he received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine and encouraged his supporters to embrace the jabs that were developed during his term of office.
“This [COVID-19] was going to ravage the country, far beyond what it is right now,” Trump, 75, told a Dallas audience during an event on Bill O’Reilly’s “History Tour” Sunday.
“Take credit for it,” the former president urged. “Take credit for it. It’s a great — What we’ve done is historic. Don’t let them take it away. Don’t take it away from ourselves. You’re playing that — you’re playing right into their hands when you’re sort of like, ‘Oh, the vaccine!’
“If you don’t want to take it, you shouldn’t be forced to take it,” Trump went on. “No mandates, but take credit, because we saved tens of millions of lives. Take credit. Don’t let them take that away from you.”
“Do you agree with that?” Trump asked, receiving a round of applause from the crowd in response.
At that point, O’Reilly told the audience that he and Trump had both been vaccinated and asked if the 45th president had received a booster, to which Trump responded, “Yes.”
“I got it too,” said O’Reilly.
The COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson were developed as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
“We got a vaccine done in less than nine months. It was supposed to take from 5 to 12 years,” Trump said earlier in the event. “Because of that vaccine, because of that vaccine, millions and millions of people — I think this would have been the Spanish flu of 1917, where up to 100 million people died [worldwide].”
Trump and former first lady Melania Trump were first vaccinated against COVID-19 in January before leaving the White House.
It’s unclear which vaccine they received or which booster Trump got.
The former president publicly battled the virus in October 2020 and was hospitalized for three nights at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.