Joe Scarborough, co-host of “Morning Joe,” is praising the Trump administration regarding the COVID-19 vaccines and Operation Warp Speed.
“I certainly don’t want to belabor the point, because I don’t want to make a lot of people that watch this show and don’t want to hear anything positive about Donald Trump spit their cereal into the television set,” Scarborough said.
He continued, “But you go back to June of 2020, and they selected J&J. They selected Pfizer. They selected Merck. They selected [AstraZeneca]. And they selected Moderna. And I remember when they selected Moderna, like, who? It was a smaller company.”
Scarborough noted that occurred in June of 2020 and that the U.S. “selected, much better, the Trump administration selected much better than Europe, obviously.”
“Then you look at what those companies did from June forward to the end of the year, come on. This is ridiculous. It’s a miracle. Got everything in place,” he added.
When President Joe Biden received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020, he praised the Trump administration, saying it “deserves some credit getting this off the ground with Operation Warp Speed.”
However, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki previously refused to give Trump credit for the vaccine rollout. She said vaccine progress was a “Herculean incredible effort by science and by medical experts.”
Scarborough then said the Trump administration “said, we don’t know how to do this, states, you handle it. Biden comes in; he nationalizes it. We’re up to 200 million.”
His remarks come as 200 million Americans have been vaccinated amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden said during his remarks on Wednesday, “The time is now to open up a new phase of this historic vaccination effort. To put it simply, if you’ve been waiting for your turn, wait no longer. Now’s the time for everyone over 16 years of age to get vaccinated.”
The president also urged employers to provide paid time off for workers to get vaccinated. He announced a tax credit to offset the costs for small businesses and nonprofits that provide employees with the paid time off.