President Joe Biden has been in office just a couple of months, and millions of Americans have already received their coronavirus vaccine. To hear Biden tell it, this is an unalloyed achievement of his own. Moncef Slaoui, the former leader of Operation Warp Speed, begs to differ.
Setting the record straight, Slaoui told CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that “90 percent” of Biden’s vaccine plan was Donald Trump’s doing, the Washington Examiner reported.
Biden plan nearly the same as Trump’s
The Biden administration did make one or two innovations, such as getting FEMA involved and providing immunizations at sports arenas, Slaoui said. He also said that the Trump administration could have managed expectations better.
But in the main, Biden’s plan is “substantially” no different than Trump’s, he said. He criticized Biden’s claim that Trump did not order enough doses as a “negative” misrepresentation.
“I think that’s a very negative description of the reality,” Slaoui said. “I do think that we had plans, and in fact, 90% of what’s happening now is the plan that we had,” he added.
Slaoui pointed out that most vaccinations under Biden are happening at pharmacies and health care centers, which was in Trump’s plan.
“But I think what’s happening is, frankly, what was the plan. Substantially what was the plan,” he said. “The bulk of vaccine distribution is happening in the healthcare centers and now in the pharmacies. And that was all part of the plan.”
Biden’s disingenuous spin
Needless to say, Slaoui’s assessment of what Trump was able to achieve is much more charitable than that of Biden, who has tried to claim that Trump left him with pretty much nothing. At one point, Biden was bold enough to claim that Trump left him without a vaccine.
If he misspoke then, Biden has snubbed Trump enough times by now to make it clear that the spin is deliberate. “When I came into office, the prior administration had contracted for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America,” he said in early March.
Biden has also sought to play up the largely underwhelming achievement of 100 million doses, even though he was well on track to reach that goal on day one of his presidency.
For his part, Trump has spoken out against Biden’s attempts to take credit for the “beautiful” shot.
Slaoui is putting a number to what commonsense makes obvious: simply put, there wouldn’t be a vaccine for Biden to brag about if not for Trump, and it is wholly disingenuous for him to pretend otherwise.
The post Former Operation Warp Speed leader gives Trump ‘90% credit’ for vaccine rollout first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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