'I Trust Vaccines. I Trust Scientists. But I Don't Trust Donald Trump,' Biden Says
Joe Biden said approval and distribution of vaccines should be divorced from politics. President Trump, predicting quick action, said a top government scientist’s timeline was wrong.With deaths from the coronavirus nearing 200,000 in the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday assailed President Trump for playing politics with a potential coronavirus vaccine, saying he did not trust Mr. Trump to determine when a vaccine was ready for the American people.
Shortly after Mr. Biden’s speech in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Trump seemed to lend credence to the former vice president’s criticism by publicly rebuking the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for saying that widespread vaccination might not be possible until the middle of next year. Speaking during an evening briefing at the White House, the president also kept up an attack line against Mr. Biden, misleadingly accusing him of “promoting his anti-vaccine theories.”
In his speech, Mr. Biden thrust the issue of a coronavirus vaccine to center stage in the presidential race, expressing grave concern over the political pressure he said Mr. Trump was exerting over the government’s approval process and accusing him of trying to rush out a vaccine for electoral gain.
“Scientific breakthroughs don’t care about calendars any more than the virus does,” he said. “They certainly don’t adhere to election cycles. And their timing and their approval and their distribution should never, ever be distorted by political considerations. It should be determined by science and safety alone.”
Mr. Biden delivered his remarks after receiving a briefing on the coronavirus vaccine from top national health experts, including Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, a former surgeon general.
As Mr. Trump, eager for a political victory, continues to suggest that a vaccine could be ready before Election Day, that prospect could become a significant campaign issue in the final stretch — if it hasn’t already.
The president’s comments that one could be rolled out before Nov. 3 have unsettled health officials, who worry that Mr. Trump is creating the impression that a vaccine might not be properly vetted at a time when the public is already concerned about political interference in the approval process.
During his briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said a vaccine would be announced “this month, next month,” then boasted that a vaccine would be ready “in a level of time that nobody thought was possible because of what we did with our F.D.A. in terms of streamlining it.”
Mr. Trump’s timeline has confounded many health experts, however, including Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., who estimated during a Senate hearing on Wednesday that a vaccine could be available for limited use by the end of the year, and for wider distribution by the middle of next year. In his briefing, Mr. Trump publicly undermined Dr. Redfield, saying he thought Dr. Redfield had “made a mistake when he said that.”
“It’s just incorrect information,” Mr. Trump continued. “I called him and he didn’t tell me that and I think he got the message maybe confused.”
Mr. Biden also said Wednesday that he believed he would have the legal authority as president to enforce a national mask mandate, which he has called for previously.
“Our legal team thinks I can do that based upon the degree to which there’s a crisis in those states, and how bad things are for the country and if we don’t do it, what happens,” he said, adding that if it were determined that he had the legal authority to sign an executive order mandating masks, he would.
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