The Biden administration officially failed to achieve getting 70 percent of adults vaccinated by Independence Day. To compensate for this failure, they’re trying to claim a different victory—one that isn’t theirs.
“We’ve reduced the percentage of people who are getting COVID, who are dying of COVID, by 90 percent,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Saturday. “That’s a huge, significant achievement.”
It sure is. But, it’s Trump’s achievement, not Biden’s.
The biggest factor in reducing COVID cases and deaths is no doubt that we got three vaccines in less than a year. That’s a Trump accomplishment, not a Biden accomplishment.
“Isn’t it incredible that because of the vaccines, which I and my Administration came up with years ahead of schedule … that we no longer need masks, and yet our names are not even mentioned in what everybody is calling the modern day miracle of the vaccines?” Trump asked in a statement back in May. Trump also noted that “everyone, including Fauci, said it would never happen.”
In fact, when Trump said he thought we’d have a vaccine before the end of 2020, the media rushed to fact-check him. NBC News, for example, wrote that “experts say that the development, testing and production of a vaccine for the public is still at least 12 to 18 months off, and that anything less would be a medical miracle.”
“The Biden Administration had zero to do with [vaccines],” Trump pointed out. “All they did was continue our plan of distribution, which was working well right from the beginning!”
This is correct. The Trump administration was actually exceeding Biden’s target pace for vaccinations before Biden took office.
The Biden administration has been guilty many times of taking credit for the vaccines and the vaccine distribution plan. Biden even claimed that when he took office, there was a vaccine supply shortage. Yet, the Trump administration had ordered enough vaccines to innoculate 60 percent of the United States population before Biden even took office. In addition, Biden wanted to reach 70 percent vaccinated by Independence Day—a goal he failed to achieve, largely due to his own missteps.
So, the Biden administration is, once again, brazenly trying to take credit for what is quite clearly Trump’s achievement.
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