With the COVID-19 vaccines starting to bring the pandemic to an end, former President Trump has stepped in to take credit for the feat.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1364742
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1364742
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He planned shit, just like everything else he “planned.”
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This was as predictable as the sun rising. Since it turned out well, he had to take credit. If it had been a debacle, it would have been Biden’s fault.
It’s also predictable that the media would buy into it. “Look! We aren’t fake news! Praise us for our balance!”
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To paraphrase Edmund Blackadder:
"Trump wouldn’t recognize a vaccine distribution plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing, ‘Vaccine Distribution Plans Are Here Again’…"
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The most charitable interpretation here is the authors of those articles genuinely don’t understand logistics, and believed getting these to the states was a huge chunk of the problem. Anyone involved in the distribution of anything understands the last mile is the most challenging part. Or in this case, the last 300 miles, since going from the airport to someone’s arm would involve about five more steps in the logistics chain.
That said, forget being charitable. If the NYT and WP didn’t understand anything about the subject, why write about it?
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He issued a statement earlier this week saying that he “hope[s] everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19…vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all.”
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Rumps plan was beautiful. It led to his downfall and for competence to be brought in. Those are results.
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What you mean, if it wasn’t for him we would not have had a vaccine for five years if ever. Nobody would ever even think of creating a vaccine in record time, not the Swiss, not the Germans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, much less the freaking Indians.
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I have a hunch the only thing Trump did was promise to subsidize vaccine development. Of course big pharma would have developed the vaccine in any event and since other countries need the vaccine the various vaccines would have been developed in a reasonably timely fashion.
One thing Trump failed to do was order enough doses to cover the entire population. That took the efforts of the Biden Administration.
I give the Trump administration credit for Operation Warp Speed, but not much more. The idea of dumping the vaccine on states without a plan for distribution was particularly negligent.
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Once again, fantastic reporting and writing from Josh and Kate!
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The WaPo and NYT know who “butters their bread” and are very happy to support/boost the person who gave them HUGE tax-breaks along with greatly increased paid circulation numbers.
They also both work on the “crisis and conflict SELL ADVERTISING” so they are perfectly happy to allow Trump sycophants to post articles praising the Orange ShitGibbon, as the generated outrage drives eyeballs to their web sites.
Naomi Klein coined the term: “Disaster Capitalism”
Both the WaPo and NYT now rely on business models you can call: “Disaster Journalism”.
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The only credit T**** deserves for anything COVID-related is the death count. And the economic devastation. And unintentionally turning Dr. Fauci into a national hero.
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What a difference it makes to have a president who’s not the epitome of narcissistic personality disorder. ICYMI, the end of Pres. Biden’s speech was an actual prayer in the best traditions of his religious practices. I could easily imagine him saying much the same in private meditation.
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It’s what they do…
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He probably had a heck of a distribution plan. To contributors, boot-lickers, his mar-a-lago kiss asses, major magats . . .
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Trump’s trolls will claim he had “plans” - simply because he used “Wallgreens, CVS and Wallmart in a sentence” - but the real tell was that we never heard any details regarding logistics - none of the essential who, what, when, where, how much, of all of the different facets of the necessary roll-out plan - because the “granularity” did not exist …
it was as if they waved their arms about and said "oh we’re going to build a big house - really big - we gots super plans! it’s gonna be super! … but not a single person on the face of the earth could tell you how many stories, how big of a garage, where’s the property? who’s the architect? when you filing permits?.. wood siding or brick? poured concrete foundation or laid-up concrete block? how many bathrooms? shingle or slate roof? Hot water baseboard or forced air? … They didn’t have the ability to discuss stuff on this level - because they did not have a plan !
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It’s way too much credit. Is there any doubt in your mind, that Hillary or Pence or Cruz or any other politician sitting in the oval office would not have done the same?
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What’s surprising is that he’s been aided in this by the Washington Post and New York Times, both of which have run articles this week arguing that the speed-up in the vaccine rollout under President Biden only builds off of a plan put into place by Trump. In short, they contend that Trump is right: he had a plan to distribute the vaccine that Biden was lucky enough to inherit.
Remind me again about that bit with the MSM and their liberal bias?
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