MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough who has heavily criticized President Trump during his time in office reversed course temporarily to praise him for facilitating the rapid development and production of a vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
“Not only this news program, but just about every other, has documented in great detail the repeated failures of Donald Trump on just about every aspect of this pandemic,” Scarborough said. “But the president – if these numbers end up playing out the way it’s looking – if, in fact, there is a 90 to 95 percent effective rate, and we have millions of Americans by the end of this year being able to take a safe vaccine that makes them immune from the coronavirus — then that’s one legacy that Donald Trump will take with him out of the White House. And that is that Operation Warp Speed will be considered an unqualified success.”
A few moments after making those remarks, Scarborough doubled down on his praise for Trump.
“If, in fact, this plays out the way the pharmaceutical companies are saying it’s going to play out, then I will say again … Donald Trump’s legacy on Operation Warp Speed will be a very positive one,” Scarborough said.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski tried to dampen her husband’s newfound enthusiasm for Trump by pointing out that there isn’t an approved vaccine yet.
The media has remained relatively quiet on Operation Warp Speed as it would damage their narrative–which they used very effectively during the campaign, that the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic was inadequate when in fact the rapid development of the vaccine is remarkable given the past history of getting drugs to the market.
Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have emergency applications pending to begin production of the vaccines. If approved, there could be enough doses for roughly 25 million Americans by the end of the year with wider availability next year.
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