President Joe Biden is railing against former President Donald Trump’s “failed” COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
“Just over four weeks ago, America had no real plan to vaccinate most of the country. My predecessor, as my mother would say, God love him, failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers. That changed the moment we took office,” Biden said while delivering remarks at the Pfizer plant on Friday.
He urged Americans to get the vaccine as soon as they can, “If there’s one message to cut through to everyone in this country it’s this: the vaccines are safe. Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available. That’s how to beat this pandemic and we’re making progress.”
Watch his comments below:
Biden: "If there's one message to cut through to everyone in this country it's this: the vaccines are safe. Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it's your turn and available. That's how to beat this pandemic. pic.twitter.com/cRrHoe95y1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2021
While delivering remarks at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, last week Biden suggested the program he inherited from Trump was in “much worse shape” than he thought, as IJR reported.
“We’re not going to have everything fixed for a while, but we’re going to fix it,” he said.
The president added, “While scientists did their job in discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be very blunt about it – did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions.”
During an interview with Newsmax TV on Wednesday, Trump slammed Biden for claiming during Tuesday night’s CNN town hall there was no vaccine before he came into office.
“I saw that he said there was no vaccine when he came into office, and yet he got a shot before he came into office,” Trump said. “It was already in early November when we announced it, but we actually had it substantially before that. We were giving millions of shots and millions of doses.”
He continued, “So he’s either not telling a truth, or he’s mentally gone, one or the other.”
According to a CNN fact check, Biden’s claim there was “nothing in the refrigerator” when he took office “has a solid factual basis, though Biden could again have been clearer about what he meant.”
A source from the White House said “this was a reference to the fact that, as reported by the Washington Post in the week before Biden’s inauguration, there was no federal reserve of second doses available at the time.”