White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain threw shade at Sen. Tim Scott’s attempt to minimize President Biden’s early successes at presidential address. Epic!
Tim Scott’s dis pf presidential address ‘shaded’
The Republican Party sacrificed one of the few Republicans left, recoverable from the Trump sycophancy and a misinforming and lying predisposition. He ceded the little respect he had left to his fatally flawed party. It was clear that his programmed response to the presidential address was yet another diatribe of misinformation and patent lies.
Lawrence O’Donnell asked Ron Klain to comment on several of Scott’s statements. Specifically, Scott dismissively claimed that the tide was already turning when President Biden took office and that it was Trump’s Warp Speed that was responsible for the new President’s success.
Democrats generally do not have quick and simple enumerated responses. However, the Biden administration is a well-oiled machine that is well managed and generally remains on the proper narrative. From White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s press conferences, which should be clinics to all executive branches, this administration remains on point, articulate, prepared, and competent.
Well, Ron Klain was ready.
“I have always said I think the Trump administration deserves some credit for its work on vaccine development,” Ron Klain said. “But in terms of where the tide was when Joe Biden became president, the week before he became president, this country had a million people file for unemployment. The week he became president, 900,000. We were losing people at the rate of 3000 to 4000 a day for COVID. Two weeks before Joe Biden became President; more people died from COVID than during the Vietnam War. So that is where the tide was when Joe Biden became president. We weren’t vaccinating people. Fewer than one percent of seniors were fully vaccinated when Joe Biden swore the oath of office. Today that number is 70% in just a hundred days. Yes, the vaccines were developed basically on science that came along before Donald Trump became president. But sure, I am happy to give the Trump administration credit for moving that along. But the key thing isn’t vaccines but vaccinations. It’s getting those shots in people’s arms. It’s getting the economy turned around. That’s what started when Joe Biden became president.”
I explain the inconvenient truth that neither Republicans nor pharmaceutical corporations are eager to tell in the video. The innovation they tout very often is funded by we-the-people, yes, taxpayer dollars. And the technology for the message RNA vaccines was being researched for decades.
The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which are likely to be the first to win FDA approval, in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally funded research: the viral protein designed by Graham and his colleagues, and the concept of RNA modification, first developed by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, Moderna’s founders in 2010 named the company after this concept: “Modified” + “RNA” = Moderna, according to co-founder Robert Langer.
“This is the people’s vaccine,” said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are funding its development. … It should belong to humanity.”
Government-Funded Scientists Laid the Groundwork for Billion-Dollar Vaccines
Well done Ron Klain.