Biden officials claimed their predecessors left nothing on vaccination distribution behind despite Dr. Anthony Fauci saying otherwise. One CNN reporter even tried to spin Fauci as a Trump loyalist to defend Biden.
Summary
Newly inaugurated Joe Biden’s coronavirus response team said on a press call there was no “plan” for distributing a covid-19 vaccine left behind by the Trump administration.
- Jeff Zients, Biden’s coronavirus task force coordinator, was quoted as saying the situation left behind by the Trump administration was “so much worse than we could have imagined”, with The Hill speculating it was an effort to “tamp down any expectations” in the coming months.
- However, Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the CDC’s infectious disease division, pushed back on the report that the Trump Administration left behind nothing, saying “we’re coming in with fresh ideas but also some ideas that were not bad with the previous administration.”
- Vaccine rollouts have been slower than hoped, with New York, the state hit hardest by the coronavirus, throwing out vaccine doses as a result of the governor’s strict vaccination guidelines (which have since been amended).
- The United States is not the only country with vaccination problems: Germany is facing logistical challenges.
- Amazon has joined the vaccine controversy, publicly offering the Biden administration assistance in vaccine distribution, an offer that was never publicly made for the Trump administration.
- When pressed about his administration’s vaccination ambitions, President Biden chided the reporter, saying “Come on, give me a break, man. It’s a good start, 100 million.”
- CNN relied on unnamed sources to report on the allegations the Trump administration left nothing behind, which was followed up by reporting on Fauci’s refutation.
- The CNN reporter who wrote the original article went on to describe Fauci, a 35+ year federal employee who has worked for seven presidents and publicly disagreed with Trump officials on numerous occasions, as a “Trump administration holdover” to obfuscate his remarks contradicting her reporting.
- Vanity Fair ran with the story without an update on Fauci’s comments, using ad hominem attacks against the Trump Administration rather than evidence.
- The Week took the same route as Vanity Fair and relied on unnamed sources from other outlets.
- Fox News reported on pushback from other journalists to CNN’s unsourced “scoop”, with one Washington Post reporter saying Biden was trying to lower expectations and that the Trump administration distributed 36 million doses.
- The Daily Caller and National Review highlighted Fauci’s comments that contradict Biden officials’ claims.
- Biden’s snap at AP reporter Zeke Miller was the focus of reporting from The Daily Wire.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
