On Sunday, former President Donald J. Trump told media personality Bill O’Reilly that he has received the COVID-19 booster shot while defending his administration for helping develop the coronavirus vaccine. His comments were made in front of a crowd as part of a national speaking tour which the duo concluded this past weekend.
Newsweek reported that in the last stop of the “The History Tour,” Trump took pride in Operation Warp Speed — the name given to the private-public partnership which led to the creation of several COVID-19 vaccines in record-time after the former president defied experts and ordered the development of the program. Previously, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins credited Trump’s Secretary of Health Alex Aazar and the Trump administration for their efforts:
“The Operation Warp Speed, for which I give a great deal of credit to secretary [Alex] Azar, was an effort that many of us were not initially convinced was going to be necessary and it was thought about as a Manhattan Project,” Collins told Axios referring to the U.S. program that developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II.
“Those words were used sometimes to describe what needed to happen in order to get all parts of the government together in an unprecedented way to test up to six vaccines in rigorous trials, and to do this at-risk manufacturing so that if any of those trials happen to work, you would already have doses ready to go into arms,” he said, adding “that would not be the way things are traditionally done.”
As part of the tour, Trump told his supporters that they had a hand in the creation of the vaccine and they should take pride in it:
“Look, we did something that was historic, we saved tens of millions of lives worldwide when we, together, all of us, we got a vaccine done,” Trump said. “This was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now, take credit for it… it’s great, what we’ve done is historic. Don’t let them take it away.”
Trump also re-affirmed that he was against vaccine mandates:
“If you don’t want to take it, you shouldn’t be forced to take it, no mandates but take credit… don’t let them take that away from you,” he said.
Currently, President Joe Biden is punishing throughs several vaccine mandates for federal and private-sector workers across America, including one being challenged by The Daily Wire in court.
O’Reilly then asked if he had received the booster shot, to which the former president confirmed that he had.
In February, former deputy chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services Paul Mango penned an op-ed in USA Today, praising the team effort of the vaccine development under Trump:
“There is no doubt that Warp Speed drew upon spectacular scientific prowess and long-standing investments in novel vaccine development technologies, but its success was much broader than this. It rapidly mobilized the extraordinary industrial dexterity, innovative spirit and adaptive capacity of the American economy.”
The Daily Wire is fighting Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate in federal court. Join us in this fight by signing our petition to OSHA, telling them that you will not comply with this mandate.
The Daily Wire is fighting Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate in federal court. Join us in this fight by signing our petition to OSHA, telling them that you will not comply with this mandate.
Source: Dailywire
