Former President Donald Trump continues to harbor his familiar delusions and egomania. This Tuesday, after the Biden administration announced that it was recommending a pause in the usage of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine over concerns about half a dozen cases of blood clots, Trump issued a self-important and rambling statement in which he yet again characterized himself as a key player in the development of COVID-19 vaccines, which is just laughable. Pretending like hardly anybody would have rushed vaccine production without pressure from the famously incompetent Trump is just not remotely realistic.
Trump petulantly commented as follows:
‘The Biden Administration did a terrible disservice to people throughout the world by allowing the FDA and CDC to call a “pause” in the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The results of this vaccine have been extraordinary but now [its] reputation will be permanently challenged. The people who have already taken the vaccine will be up in arms, and perhaps all of this was done for politics or perhaps it’s the FDA’s love for Pfizer.’
It’s bonkers how Trump insists upon seeing imaginary conspiracies in so many situations. Subsequently on Tuesday, he reiterated his utterly baseless conspiracy theory that an announcement of promising test results from Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine trials after the election was part of an imaginary plot against him to keep promising news hidden until after the race. He’s so clownishly incompetent that he didn’t even describe the situation correctly — shortly after the election, promising trial results emerged, not an “approval” as Trump claimed. Authorities didn’t actually approve the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine for usage until December 11.
Trump added as follows:
‘Remember, it was the FDA working with Pfizer, who announced the vaccine approval two days after the 2020 Presidential Election. They didn’t like me very much because I pushed them extremely hard. But if I didn’t, you wouldn’t have a vaccine for 3-5 years, or maybe not at all… The only way we defeat the China Virus is with our great vaccines!’
Check out his statement by clicking on the post below:
Statement from former President Trump on the pause of J&J vaccines: pic.twitter.com/nsL8T8kwRK
— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) April 13, 2021
Again — pretending like Trump was somehow the linchpin in the development of COVID-19 vaccines is just laughable. The Trump administration provided financial support for the development of vaccines — which seems like an absolute bare minimum. There’s been no conspiracy among health industry players to delay the production of the vaccine. Major COVID-19 vaccines rely on groundbreaking biological mechanisms that have been worked on (while not actually employed) for awhile, so of course timelines around vaccine development have shifted.
