Trump was the one ultimately responsible for authorising Operation Warp Speed, which led to the experimental Covid mRNA vaxxes being delivered to the public, without the years of testing other vaccines received. Otherwise, why the special authorisation? Dr Fauci denied that the vaxxes were not tested to the usual standard, but he is wrong by definition on this for mRNA research does not necessarily equate to mRNA vaccine/gene therapy research. The excess deaths and vax injuries are something Trump is responsible for, but probably on legal advice, he never addresses vaccine deaths and injuries, and instead doubles down on what a great job he did, as father of the great jab. Yet, faced now with the Biden regime pressing for war with Russia, with a likely nuclear exchange, we may need to forget about the sins of the Covid mandates. They got away with it for the time.
“Former President Donald Trump continues to double down on his support for the COVID-19 vaccines, repeating the suggestion that they saved “100 million people” while claiming he had no regrets about his handling of COVID-19, and defending his decision not to remove lockdown proponent Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a contentious sit-down interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier.
During the wide-ranging interview, aired in two parts Monday and Tuesday, the former president and Republican 2024 candidate reiterated his claim to have a “very smart” Democrat friend who questioned why “I’ve never heard you talk about the incredible job you did with the vaccines […] You may have saved in the world, throughout the world, 100 million people and you never talk about it.”
“I said I really don’t want to talk about it because as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about because for some reason it’s just not,” Trump responded. “Because people love the vaccines and people hate the vaccines. But conservatives aren’t, and, and I understand both sides of it, by the way. I understand both sides very well. What I didn’t do is the mandates.”
Trump then attempted to paint his chief rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as “a guy who could forget the past so quickly” due to DeSantis’s early support of the shots, which the governor has long since repudiated as evidence about their ineffectiveness and adverse effects has come to light. Last year his administration began conducting its own studies, which concluded that they should not be taken by young men, and the Florida Supreme Court approved DeSantis’s request for a grand jury investigation into the claims of the vaccines’ manufacturers.
He also suggested DeSantis had supported Fauci, the former White House Coronavirus Task Force member and National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director and one of the foremost proponents of lockdown policies, apparently a reference to DeSantis speaking positively about the Trump administration’s COVID team, including Fauci, in the early weeks of the pandemic. By summer 2020, DeSantis was publicly pushing back against Fauci’s claims that he reopened Florida too soon.
“Sure, but you didn’t fire him. You listened to him, you kept him on,” Baier said.
“You’re not actually allowed to fire him but I wouldn’t let that usually get in my way. You know, it’s one of those things,” Trump asserted, citing federal civil service rules and insisting “I never actually spent a lot of time with Fauci.” While NIAID Director is not a presidentially-appointed position and therefore Trump could not have removed Fauci from the government entirely, Fauci’s membership on the White House COVID task force was purely within the president’s discretion.
Despite reports and comments at the time indicating some disagreement between the two men, as late as July 2020 Trump said that he had a “very good relationship” with Fauci, who has a “very good approval rating and I like that […] We could have gotten other people. We could have gotten somebody else. It didn’t have to be Dr. Fauci.” As late as October 2020, Trump’s reelection campaign was releasing campaign ads aligning the president with Fauci, whom Trump gave a presidential commendation “in recognition of [his] exceptional efforts on Operation Warp Speed” on his last full day in office.
Trump also said “no” when asked, “do you have regrets about how you handled that” in reference to his administration’s COVID response.
“I gave the governors the options,” he said. “For instance, Henry McMaster (R) of South Carolina…he didn’t shut it down. Tennessee didn’t shut it down. South Dakota didn’t shut it down. Georgia shut it down for a little while, but not much. They did a good job […] It’s a federalist system. I told all governors, you do what you want, you can shut it down or not. Florida, by the way, he shut it down tight, no highways, no beaches, no this.”
Trump’s answer was a stark departure from his April 2020 criticism of Georgia for reopening “too soon,” as well as how he spoke about DeSantis and Florida before perceiving the governor as a potential rival. Throughout the latter half of 2020, Trump repeatedly praised him for resisting lockdowns.”