The White House held a late afternoon press conference on the historic success of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), America’s mobilization to create vaccines and therapeutics to fight Covid-19. President Donald Trump led off, and cited the tremendous mobilization, with an historic investment in our infrastructure, that created ventilators, PPE, therapeutics and vaccines. He pointedly referenced that he’d been receiving calls from many leaders of other countries, congratulating him upon the announcement of the Pfizer vaccine’s high efficacy.
He rather politely called the New York Times’ embarrassing effort to present Pfizer’s vaccine as not connected with OWS, an “unfortunate misrepresentation.” Then he took the gloves off and put New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his place. Trump said that, while politics had been kept out of the OWS achievement, the New York state governor was an exception. The governor objected to the vaccine deployment because it was associated with Trump. Therefore, vaccines will shortly go to 49 states, but nothing to New York, unfortunately, because the governor has decided it won’t be deployed there. “The Governor will let us know when he’s ready. I hope he doesn’t run this as badly as he did the nursing homes.”
