MSNBC host Joe Scarborough praised President Donald Trump’s administration for its role in speeding up coronavirus vaccine development, calling Operation Warp Speed an “unqualified success” during Wednesday morning’s “Morning Joe.”
The past two weeks have seen news of vaccines that are at least 90% effective from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, all of which have received or will receive some degree of federal aid as a result of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.
“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,” Scarborough said Wednesday. “And that is that Operation Warp Speed will be considered an unqualified success.”
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Before praising his role in vaccine development, Scarborough qualified it by first criticizing what he considers Trump’s “repeated failures” on “just about every aspect of this pandemic.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper also praised the Trump administration earlier this month after news of Moderna’s upcoming vaccine was released, calling Warp Speed “an unmitigated success.”
“We should take a moment, as we always have when discussing vaccine and Operation Warp Speed, that this is, you know, putting aside all of the failures of the Trump administration when it comes to the coronavirus, and there are lots, this is an unmitigated success and we should acknowledge that,” said Tapper. (RELATED: More Americans Willing To Take Coronavirus Vaccine After Promising Announcements, Poll Shows)
The first doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are reportedly set to begin being rolled out as early as mid-December.