President Joe Biden did something he rarely does on Wednesday, giving credit to former President Donald Trump and his administration for developing COVID-19 vaccines.
The Democratic chief executive has taken on some criticism from Republicans for, in their view, taking too much credit for the existence of the three coronavirus inoculations being put into arms in the United States. All three were developed while Trump was still in office, something Biden said plainly on Wednesday.
“Getting the vaccine is not a partisan act. The science was done under Republican and Democratic administrations,” Biden said, appearing to speak directly to vaccine skeptics in deeply conservative parts of the country.
“As a matter of fact, the first vaccines were authorized under a Republican president,” he said, omitting Trump’s name.
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But he did make sure to give himself and his own team credit for getting doses of the vaccines more widely distributed than Trump did while in office.
“And developed by a Democratic president,” he said, catching his slip, “deployed by a Democratic president.”
“Getting the vaccine is not a partisan act,” President Biden says. “Every American over 12 years of age, no matter where you live, what you believe, who you voted for, has the right to get vaccinated” https://t.co/kBlYmK4QJ7 pic.twitter.com/S81LovoGHb
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 2, 2021
Trump has complained about Biden’s habit of not giving his administration credit for developing and issuing emergency use authorizations for the vaccines. Before he left office, the 45th president in late November implored reporters: “Don’t let Biden take credit” for the three drugs’ existences.
But the 46th president said shortly after taking office that he and his team scrambled to develop a more effective nationwide distribution plan to clean up what he dubbed “the mess we inherited.”
Biden’s credit-giving was part of a broader speech Wednesday in which he urged people over the age of 12 to get their shots “no matter what you believe, no matter who you voted for.”
“It’s your choice. So, please, exercise your freedom,” the president said. “Live without fear. We need to be one America, united.”
The remarks come as the White House searches for a way to convince vaccine skeptics and outright opponents in heavily Republican states with the lowest vaccination rates among adults to get their jabs.
Among the states with the lowest rates of adults inoculated against the sometimes-deadly and highly contagious virus are some that supported the fully vaccinated Trump in 2016 and 2020: Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Missouri.
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None of the states have an adult vaccination rate above 35%.
