Former President Donald Trump has blamed President Joe Biden for a lack of trust in COVID-19 vaccines amid ongoing hesitancy to receive the shot among a large section of the U.S. public.
Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Thursday during a phone interview that his administration had done "an incredible job" handling the COVID-19 pandemic and "everybody" wanted the vaccine when he was president.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s COVID Data Tracker, 76.2 percent of people aged 12 or over have received at least one dose of vaccine and 65.8 percent of that group is fully vaccinated.
Trump told Hannity: "During my administration, everybody wanted the vaccine."
"There was nobody saying 'oh, gee, I don't want to take it.' Now they say that and that's because they don't trust the Biden administration. I can think of no other reason," he said.
"When I was there, everybody wanted it," he added.
Trump briefly touched on the military during his time in office and said: "We had great leaders, great generals and they did a fantastic job of the distribution of the vaccine. But there were no people - very few people - I heard of no people that didn't want to take it."
The former president has been vaccinated and has repeatedly said he's pro-vaccine but he has faced criticism from supporters as a result. He was booed during a rally in Cullman, Alabama on August 21 when he encouraged the crowd to get the shot. He responded to the boos by saying he believed "totally in your freedoms."
Trump discussed the vaccine and COVID-19 therapeutics, including Regeneron's antibody treatment, and asked: "How is it possible that your numbers are bigger now?"
"But I don't read that the numbers are bigger now. You hardly hear it," he said. "If that were me, it would be brutal because we did an incredible job on the pandemic. An incredible job."
The total number of COVID-19 cases has continued to rise since Biden came to office on January 20 this year. The number of daily cases and deaths during August and September were higher than the same period in 2020, according to CDC data.
Trump made similar comments about Biden and vaccines in an interview with The Spectator magazine, excerpts of which were published on Friday morning.
The former president said he was "a believer of the vaccine. I'm the one that came up with it in nine months or less", referring to his administration's Operation Warp Speed effort designed to accelerate the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Trump went on to say: "You can't force people to do things. You can explain it. Very interestingly, when I was president, there was no talk of mandates. You didn't need mandates. Everybody wanted to get the vaccine. And since then, I don't know. It's a lack of trust of Biden."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more
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