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Press Secretary Jen Psaki reminded Fox News reporter Peter Doocy why then-candidate, now-President Joe Biden said he didn’t trust then-President Donald Trump on COVID vaccines during the 2020 campaign.
At the White House daily briefing Wednesday, Doocy tried to get Psaki to place blame on the president for the publics’ hesitancy to be vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus that is plaguing our country.
Once he’d asked about the vacant FDA commissioner position, Doocy said “As the president tries to reach unvaccinated Americans, has there been any thought given, looking back, to the possibility that he may have created some vaccine hesitancy when last year around this time, the previous administration was rushing to get a vaccine authorized, and the now-president said ‘I trust vaccines, I trust scientist, but I don’t trust Donald Trump at this moment, and the American people can’t either?”
Those remarks were made by Biden in September of last year.
“Well I think it’s safe to say he still doesn’t trust Donald Trump, so that hasn’t changed, but he does trust scientists, he does trust data experts, and he does trust the people leading the CDC, the FDA, which is the gold standard of approval for vaccines,” Psaki said, and noted that the president has credited the Trump administration for “their role in moving the vaccine forward.”
“Yes but at the time when Donald Trump was out there saying we’re going to have a vaccine in the next couple of weeks, the next couple of months, and Joe Biden is out on the campaign trail saying don’t trust Donald Trump, did that create any kind of vaccine hesitancy? Doocy asked.
“Not that we’ve seen in the data,” Psaki said, then added “I would note that at the time, just for context, the former president was also suggesting people inject versions of poison into their veins to cure Covid. So I think that’s a relevant point.”
Psaki referenced the suggestion Trump made during a Covid briefing last April.
“And Joe Biden, then president, was saying we’ve got to wait until something is fully authorized, and it’s still not,” Doocy said, misspeaking Biden’s position at the time.
“Well the FDA works on the timeline of science,” Psaki said. “At the time, we’ve also seen tens of millions of people’s lives saved who have gotten the vaccine. That data is clear across the country.”
Janet Woodcock, Acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, does face some Democratic opposition to her potential nomination to the post.
