President Donald Trump sounds desperate. With his time in office now soon running out, he’s sticking to some of his most familiar behaviors: including feverish Twitter meltdowns. On Monday morning, Trump rushed to Twitter to shout in all-caps about some of the latest news, including a boost in the stock market (which will mean nothing to the millions of Americans who don’t own stock) and bright news from the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer announced that the COVID-19 vaccine they’ve been working on appears to be more than 90 percent effective — and the company made clear that their efforts had nothing to do with the Trump administration, despite an explicit claim otherwise from Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump tweeted the following message:
‘STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!’
STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
Does he want credit for any of those developments? One of the biggest recent pieces of news that could be impacting stock trading is the election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States. A Biden presidency would likely mean significantly less freewheeling chaos than a Trump administration, so investors and observers can breathe a sigh of relief. Biden likely won’t be sending sudden dramatic import taxes down the pipe, for instance.
Pence was more direct in his attempt to claim some credit for the development of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, which could soon be mass-distributed to Americans following further work. (Other companies have also been working on their own vaccines, and those might turn out to be promising as well.) Pence claimed on Twitter that the Pfizer vaccine’s development success was “thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President [Donald Trump]” — but the company says that it “did NOT join in the administration’s partnership,” as NBC reporter Geoff Bennett explains. Pfizer’s head of vaccine development Dr. Kathrin Jansen has said that the company “has never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”
As Pence claims credit, Pfizer says it did NOT join in the administration's partnership.
Pfizer head of vaccine development Dr. Kathrin Jansen told the NY Times: “We were never part of the Warp Speed … We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.” https://t.co/GScL3vodx9
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 9, 2020
Check out Twitter’s reaction below:
