Media darling Dr. Anthony Fauci showed yet again how loyal he is to Democrats on CNN Newsroom Tuesday, by backtracking from his own prior statements so he could defend Vice President Kamala Harris’s “starting from scratch” lie.
Fauci backed up Harris after she was caught pushing debunked lies to Axios about the Trump administration not having any vaccine plan or stockpile, prior to Biden taking office.
Tuesday morning on CNN, co-anchor Jim Sciutto ended a interview with Fauci, that praised the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic, with two critical questions about Democrats:
Andrew Cuomo is coming under a fair amount of criticism now for the big move back to long-term care facilities in the midst of this crisis here. He's argued that his state was following federal guidelines when he ordered those long-term care facilities to accept patients returning from hospitals. I wonder, could you clear that up. Was he actually following federal guidelines to do that?
And
Kamala Harris, she spoke, the Vice President of course, spoke to HBO Axios over the weekend and she said, she used this phrase again, ‘we're starting from scratch.’ And I wonder if you agree with that, that the vaccination plan come January 20th of this year, that you were starting from the beginning there or was there something in place that just needed some improvements?
Fauci refused to get political for the first question, responding that he “preferred not to comment” on the Democrat governor’s nursing home scandal (though he previously had no problem praising Cuomo’s leadership.)
But for the second, he did get political. The White House advisor and Director for the NIAID actually contradicted his own prior statements rejecting CNN’s anonymously-sourced story (which also insisted the Biden admin had inherited a “nonexistent” distribution plan and had to “start from scratch.”) Fauci also found time to knock the Republican administration he previously worked for:
FAUCI: What I think the Vice President is referring to is that the actual plan of getting the vaccine doses into people's arms was really rather vague. I mean, it was not a well coordinated plan. Getting the vaccines made, getting them shipped through Operation Warp Speed was okay.
But I believe what the Vice President is referring to is what is the process of actually getting these doses into people. That is something that we had to get much better organized now with getting the community vaccine centers, getting the pharmacies involved, getting mobile units involved. So that is what I believe she was referring to.
Of course, Sciutto ate that up, asking "Okay. Do we have a plan now in your view? A workable plan to get a significant enough plan to get vaccinations into people's arms?" to which Dr. Fauci quickly confirmed, "Yes, absolutely."
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Read the transcript here:
CNN Newsroom
2/16/2021
JIM SCIUTTO: Final question, you're a New Yorker yourself, you don't live there right now. Andrew Cuomo is coming under a fair amount of criticism now for the big move back to long-term care facilities in the midst of this crisis here. He's argued that his state was following federal guidelines when he ordered those long-term care facilities to accept patients returning from hospitals. I wonder, could you clear that up. Was he actually following federal guidelines to do that?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: You know, Jim. I can't, I'm sorry, I honestly am not trying to evade your question but I'm not sure of the details of all the details of that and I think if I make a statement, it is probably could either be incorrect or taken out of context. So I prefer not to comment on that.
SCIUTTO: Okay, final question then on vaccination. Because on the issue of whether there was a plan in place before the Biden administration took over, Kamala Harris, she spoke, the Vice President of course, spoke to HBO Axios over the weekend and she said, she used this phrase again, ‘we're starting from scratch.’ And I wonder if you agree with that, that the vaccination plan come January 20th of this year, that you were starting from the beginning there or was there something in place that just needed some improvements?
FAUCI: What I think the Vice President is referring to is that the actual plan of getting the vaccine doses into people's arms was really rather vague. I mean, it was not a well coordinated plan. Getting the vaccines made, getting them shipped through operation warp speed was okay. But I believe what the vice president is referring to is what is the process of actually getting these doses into people. That is something that we had to get much better organized now with getting the community vaccine centers, getting the pharmacies involved, getting mobile units involved. So that is what I believe she was referring to.
SCIUTTO: Okay. Do we have a plan now in your view? A workable plan to get a significant enough plan to get vaccinations into people's arms?
FAUCI: Yes. Absolutely, Jim. The critical issue is that the demand far outweighs the supply. That is the issue. As these vaccines coming in in greater quantities as we get into March and as we get into April, with both Moderna and Pfizer increasing the amounts of doses they'll give us in addition to J&J [Johnson& Johnson], I'm a little disappointed that the number of doses that we'll get early on from J&J are relatively small but as we get further into the spring, there will be more and more. That is what we need, Jim. We need more doses. We have a good plan how to get the doses into people's arms, we just need more vaccine.
SCIUTTO: We'll be watching closely.Dr. Anthony Fauci, thank you for the work that you do.
