Now it appears that Big Pharma is in on the anti-Trump conspiracy. The president tweeted out his belief that Pfizer delayed announcing the effectiveness of their vaccine until after the election because “they didn’t have the courage to do it before.”
As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2020
Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, took umbrage at that suggestion.
Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, completely rejected these suggestions in a Monday interview with CNN. “We announced it the moment we learned about it,” Bourla said. “I said multiple times that the election for us is an artificial timeline.”
“This is when science brought it to us,” he said.
Whether that’s completely true or not is debatable. What isn’t debatable is the effect of Pfizer making a premature announcement of success and then discovering the vaccine is a bust. I daresay the drug giant would have a hard time recovering after a debacle like that.
Trump and some of his top aides had claimed for months that the vaccine would be ready by Election Day, despite the public health officials within his own administration saying that timeline was likely too optimistic. The president’s insistence that the vaccine be ready before the election drew substantial concern from doctors, scientists and many lawmakers—as they feared this could lead to the approval of an unsafe vaccine.
It should be noted that researchers and some of the companies involved in producing the vaccine all gave a timeline of late October-early November for the end of the final-stage trials of the vaccine. Trump never claimed the vaccine would be “ready by Election Day.” That’s a lie. He said the vaccine would be a reality which is a far cry from being “ready.”
Nonetheless, fashioning a conspiracy theory about the vaccine and the timing of the announcement is a reach. Trump Jr. is spitting into the wind by questioning “the timing.”
The timing of this is pretty amazing. Nothing nefarious about the timing of this at all right? 🙄 https://t.co/nS5rkywKXT
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 9, 2020
The whole world does not have it in for Donald Trump. It may be comforting to believe Trump is a victim of a conspiracy rather than the architect of his own electoral disaster. But even the media couldn’t make up some of the crap Trump has thrown at the wall to see if it would stick.
Losing candidates usually end up losing not because of anything anyone else did but by their own incompetence and stupidity, Donald Trump ran a horrible campaign. They ran out of money in September and were forced to cut back on advertising in some key states, pulling ads in others. There was no consistent messaging. The campaign appeared chaotic and undisciplined. It leaked like a sieve. You’d think a successful businessman could have done better.
He didn’t and he lost.
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