Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott blasted President Joe Biden on Friday for taking credit for the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine across the country in his primetime address to the nation.
Scott appeared alongside hosts Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” and reacted to Biden’s claim in the Thursday night speech that former President Donald Trump didn’t do anything to fight the virus. (RELATED: CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Says US Will ‘Probably’ Have ‘Functional Herd Immunity’ From Coronavirus In Spring And Summer)
Hemmer began by reading a quote from Biden’s speech saying that the country was “hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked.” He stated that Biden also said there were “denials for days, weeks, then months” about the virus.
“He wasn’t talking about Wuhan, wasn’t talking about Beijing. He was talking about the Trump White House and Operation Warp Speed. What did you think of that, senator?” Hemmer asked.
“Unbelievable to be honest with you. Let’s take a look back at 2020. It was NBC News that said they had to fact check President Trump, who said we would have a vaccine within a year. They said that would take a miracle,” Scott responded. “What did President Trump produce? A miracle.”
He went on to say that Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s partnership with private companies to quickly produce, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine, produced not one, but three vaccines. He then said that the Trump administration bought “100 million doses,” which means that “when President Biden came into office” there was already an average of “more than a million doses” of vaccines being administered a day.
“By Jan. 25 it was 1.2 million,” he added, before saying that Biden’s vaccine goal for his first 100 days was “underwhelming.”
“Thank God for the genius of the Trump administration, who delivered 300 million doses ready to be put in arms on day one,” he concluded.
The numbers Scott cited on vaccines were not completely accurate. The highest number of vaccine doses ever administered in one day under Trump was 911,493 on Jan. 19, according to NBC News. By Jan. 25 there were nearly 1.5 million doses being administered per day. The rate of daily vaccine doses has continued to go up under the Biden administration, sitting at 2.2 million per day as of Mar. 11. Also on Jan. 19, one day before Biden took office, only 31 million vaccine doses had been delivered, according to the Washington Post, and not the 300 million Scott claimed.
Trump, however, did receive widespread praise for Operation Warp Speed’s success on vaccines, including from some Democrats. He credited himself for the quick rollout on Wednesday saying, “If I wasn’t president, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful shot.”