‘Trump is not my God’: how the former president’s only vaccine victory turned sour

She is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. But when the former US president came to her home city and praised coronavirus vaccines, Flora Moore did something she never thought possible. She booed him.

"He said take the vaccine but we all booed and said no," she recalled of Trump's event with broadcaster Bill O'Reilly in Orlando, Florida. "He heard us loud and clear because the Amway Center was packed. We let him know 'no' and a couple of us even hollered out, 'It's killing people!'"

There is no scientific basis to the claim that the vaccines are killing people. In fact, they have demonstrably saved thousands of lives. But Moore is indicative of the extreme anti-vaccine sentiment consuming the base of the Republican party - a monster that Trump himself can no longer control.

America is exhausted by a pandemic still killing more than 2,400 people a day, the overwhelming majority of whom are unvaccinated, bringing the total death toll to 900,000.

In more conventional times, Trump's Operation Warp Speed, which developed vaccines in record time, would be a source of pride for his voters. Even his successor, Joe Biden, has praised the initiative, stating: "Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America was one of the first countries to get the vaccine."

But Trump's eagerness to claim credit has been undone by conservatives' backlash against Biden's efforts to legally require worker vaccinations, which they cast as a threat to individual freedom. The ex-president's customary applause turned to jeers when he encouraged supporters to get vaccinated and told O'Reilly that he received a booster himself.

What was arguably Trump's most important legacy from an otherwise disastrous pandemic response, and a divisive four-year presidency, has turned into a political liability, threatening to turn his own fans against him. Laurie Garrett, an award-winning science writer, observed: "It's probably the only time his base has ever booed him about anything. If he can no longer brag about Operation Warp Speed, what can he brag about regarding how he handled Covid?"