Former Operation Warp Speed adviser Moncef Slaoui is taking aim at President Joe Biden for his “very negative description” of former President Donald Trump’s vaccine plan.
During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Margaret Brennan showed Slaoui a video of Biden accusing the Trump administration of failing to order enough vaccines.
She asked Slaoui, “Is that fair?”
He replied, “I think that’s a very negative description of the reality. I do think that we had plans, and, in fact, 90% of what’s happening now is the plan that we had. Of course, the first thing was to accelerate the development of the vaccine. We contracted specifically a hundred million doses of vaccine.”
Slaoui continued, “But also built into the contract options to acquire more vaccines once we knew they are effective and the plan was to order more vaccines when we knew they are more effective. I think what’s happening is right, but I think what’s happening is frankly what was the plan.”
Check out part of his interview below:
Pres. Biden has criticized the Trump White House for failing to provide enough COVID-19 vaccine doses.
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 21, 2021
Former Operation Warp Speed adviser Moncef Slaoui calls the characterization a “very negative description of the reality…90% of what's happening now is the plan that we had" pic.twitter.com/KWCBiQOfk6
Trump responded to Biden’s claim on Jan. 20, “We didn’t have” a COVID-19 vaccine when he came into office, during his interview on “The Truth with Lisa Boothe” podcast Monday.
“Yet he got his shots on December 21st … So I don’t know if that was a bad moment or what it was. I don’t know if he meant that,” Trump said.
He added, “But we had given millions of shots by that time and we were up to 1.3 million shots a day. That was better than many of his days.”
Trump called Operation Warp Speed “amazing” and emphasized the record time in which the vaccine was developed.
During a Fox News interview last week, Trump recommended Americans get the COVID-19 vaccine, as IJR reported.
“It’s a great vaccine and it’s a safe vaccine,” Trump said.