News
Greg Evans
Mar 13, 2021
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has made a few steps back into the media spotlight for taking credit for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in the United States, something which CNN’s Anderson Cooper felt obliged to correct him on.
On Wednesday, Trump put out a widely ridiculed statement where he told everyone that is getting the vaccine in the US that they should be ‘thankful to him otherwise they wouldn’t be getting it.’ Trump and his administration were quick to boast about how quickly the vaccine had come into existence thanks to Operation Warp Speed, a fact they were corrected on.
It had also emerged in recent weeks that Trump and his wife Melania, secretly received the vaccine while he was still the president and chose not to publicise it.
Given his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the disregard he consistently showed for safety protocols during his final year as president, Trump’s statement certainly angered many but Cooper has a solution for this and what Trump could do to be taken seriously on the matter.
The CNN host proposed that “if the former president wants any credit for that, which he certainly deserves, he also has to accept responsibility for the failures of his administration, which were many on testing, prevention, leadership which contributed to the sickening death toll.”
"Without a vaccine, modeling safe behavior is all you can do. Yet he did the opposite. All the time. And reveled in… https://t.co/TqQNQTQf1L— Anderson Cooper 360° (@Anderson Cooper 360°) 1615600525
Cooper argued that if Trump had have taken the pandemic seriously then there is a good chance that he would’ve won re-election and even neglected to do so when he himself got the virus shortly before November’s election.
Cooper added, “Think about that. Without a vaccine, modelling safe behaviour is all you can do. Yet he did the opposite. All the time. And revelled in it.”
The United States has by far the highest Covid-related death rate and number of cases in the world. However, statistics show that more than 300 million Americans have already received their first jab.
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