A comedy duo’s trip to Donald Trump’s rally in Texas over the weekend elicited a humourous moment when the pair caught up with a Trump supporter bearing a shirt declaring his opposition to the vaccine, resulting in the man’s mockery in a segment on MSNBC.
During an interview with the left-leaning comedy duo The Good Liars on MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian Reports, clips were played of the pair’s interviews with supporters of the former president ahead of his address to supporters in Conroe, Texas on Saturday.
In one clip played on the network, a man is seen wearing a shirt bearing the comically-misspelled phrase “Unvaxxed Villian”, resulting in an amusing moment wherein Good Liars member Jason Selvig asked him about the shirt and was promptly issued a personalised business card bearing the correct spelling of the phrase.
“I grabbed the wrong graphic when I sent it to the t-shirt place,” explained the man, who did not give his name in the video.
He also made the bizarre false claim that his nicotine abuse would actually help guard him against Covid-19 in a manner similar to the protection provided by vaccines and booster shots.
“I do smoke and there were studies that have come out of France, nicotine users tend to also not be susceptible to things,” he said.
“Lung cancer might be the exception,” Mr Segel told him in response.
“Well, I don’t smoke any of the name-brand cigarettes’” said the man.
After the segment cut back to the duo grinning at the clip as Ms Vossoughian quipped, “I grabbed the wrong graphic but I decided to continue to print my t-shirts.”
She then noted of his other claim: “I didn’t realise it was just the name-brand cigarettes that cause lung cancer.”
The duo’s work was reminiscent of interviews that correspondents with The Daily Show, Comedy Central’s long-running parody newscast, often conduct at rallies for the former president and other right-wing gatherings, such as a candlelight vigil for jailed January 6 rioters in Washington DC earlier this month.
Opposition to the Covid-19 vaccine remains a sticking point among a sizable portion of the Republican Party’s hardline supporters, resulting in a divide in the party between politicians and figures who openly oppose vaccinations and others like the former president himself who support the jabs but not the efforts by President Joe Biden to mandate them for the military and many businesses.
Mr Trump has repeatedly urged his supporters to get vaccinated while some who claim to still support him on many issues, like Rep Marjorie Taylor Green, have spread misinformation about the shots and claimed that they are dangerous.
