On Thursday morning, CNN White House correspondent MJ Lee filed an anonymously-sourced story on behalf of her fellow lefties that set the agenda for Zuckerville and like-minded outlets (which our friend Drew Holden chronicled in another legendary thread): “Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start ‘from scratch,’ sources say.”
But as we would learn hours later from Dr. Tony Fauci of NIH, the Biden administration “certainly [is] not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution.”
Huh. So, in other words, Lee’s story was nothing more than pants-on-fire fake news. Trump should ask Bernie Sanders how it felt to be on the receiving end of Lee’s propaganda.
On the vaccines, Lee’s lede graph griped that the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed was nonexistent, asserting there was “no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration,” creating “a significant challenge for the new White House.”
As our friend Steve Krakauer tweeted just after 4:30 p.m. Eastern, he had pegged the number of times CNN uttered the phrase “from scratch” on-air at 23 times. But very quickly, the story made zero sense, based on the number of vaccines produced, distributed, and administered.
If the plan was nonexistent, how come there have been 18.4 million shots given, according to Bloomberg?
But because it came from CNN and that it was another negative Trump story, liberal reporters were able to spend another day on a sugar high trashing the former President instead of asking anything remotely critical of the current one.
However, NBC’s Kristen Welker used White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s second briefing to pose this question to Fauci directly:
And if I could just ask you about the effort to distribute the vaccines because, of course, that's what most people want to know. When are they going to get a vaccine? Is the Biden administration starting from scratch with the vaccine distribution effort? Or are you picking up where the Trump administration left off?
Fauci left zero wiggle room, other than to say they were going to scale up what was already happening:
No, I mean, we certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution. But if you look at the plan that the President has put forth about the things that he's going to do, namely, get community vaccine centers up, get pharmacies more involved, where appropriate, get the Defense Production Act involved not only, perhaps, with getting more vaccine, but even the things you need to get a good vaccine program. For example, needles and syringes that might be more useful in that. So it's taking what's gone on, but amplifying it in a big way.
Welker came back with a follow-up, noting that Biden has called the vaccine rollout “abysmal, essentially,” so why would there be anything left to “tak[e] from the previous administration” as it would be “delaying your efforts to get the vaccine.”
Again, Fauci wouldn’t sign onto the crux of CNN’s story: “No. We're coming in with fresh ideas but also some ideas that were not bad ideas with the previous administration. You can't say it was absolutely not usable at all. So we are continuing, but you're going to see a real ramping up of it.”
Lee updated the story to include the above quotes from Fauci, but went no further in admitting that her reporting had been shredded beyond any sort of credibility.
This is CNN.
To see the relevant portion of the January 21 briefing transcript, click “expand.”
White House Press Briefing
January 21, 2020
4:13 p.m. EasternKRISTEN WELKER: And if I could just ask you about the effort to distribute the vaccines because, of course, that's what most people want to know. When are they going to get a vaccine? Is the Biden administration starting from scratch with the vaccine distribution effort? Or are you picking up where the Trump administration left off?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: No, I mean, we certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution. But if you look at the plan that the President has put forth about the things that he's going to do, namely, get community vaccine centers up, get pharmacies more involved, where appropriate, get the Defense Production Act involved not only, perhaps, with getting more vaccine, but even the things you need to get a good vaccine program. For example, needles and syringes that might be more useful in that. So it's taking what's gone on, but amplifying it in a big way.
WELKER: President Biden said that what was left was abysmal, essentially. I mean, is there anything actionable that you are taking from the previous administration? Or — and is that delaying your efforts to get the vaccine? I mean, that's the question.
FAUCI: No. We're coming in with fresh ideas but also some ideas that were not bad ideas with the previous administration. You can't say it was absolutely not usable at all. So we are continuing, but you're going to see a real ramping up of it.
