With the midterm elections approaching, reports have repeatedly suggested President Donald Trump was being urged to retreat from vaccine reform.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda was said to be politically toxic, with Republican strategists reportedly wanting the administration focused instead on food, chronic disease and the economy.
Much of that narrative rested on polling by Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio, widely interpreted as showing Kennedy’s vaccine agenda was a political loser.
But the polling was never the whole story.
As I previously reported, journalist Emily Kopp revealed that another Fabrizio survey—commissioned by MAHA Action last October—found 73% of voters concerned about vaccine mandates and 90% about pharmaceutical industry influence.
A separate Zogby Strategies survey, released by the Brownstone Institute and Health Freedom Defense Fund, produced a similar picture, finding strong support for informed consent and opposition to medical mandates.
So has Trump changed political strategy? Were his advisers misreading the electorate? Or has he simply decided vaccines are an issue on which he is prepared to absorb the political cost?