President Donald Trump said he was surprised but very appreciative that President Joe Biden praised him and his administration for their roles in making COVID 19 vaccines available to the American public.
Biden credited his predecessor for the vaccine rollout in the United States last year, during the announcement of new actions the current administration was taking in the face of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Let me be clear. America was one of the first countries to get the vaccine thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, according to Biden in a speech from the White House on Tuesday.
The president said that the U.S. became one of the world's leaders in getting shots in arms with the help of his administration and the hard work of Americans. Trump said he appreciated the comments and that they would help in bridging political divides in the country. I was surprised to hear it. He said that it is a great thing, and I think it makes a lot of people happy," he told Fox News.
I think he did something very good. The former president said that the healing in this country has to be a process.
Trump has said that Biden's praises have made it hard for him to be critical against his 2020 political rival. He thanked me for the vaccine and thanked me for what I did. It is very tough for me to be overly critical now, because that's a first, so that's a first, the former president said.
In his Tuesday speech, Biden said that Trump received his COVID 19 booster shot, which he and I agree on, which is one of the few things he and I can agree on. Donald Trump drew boos from an audience in Dallas, Texas, last Sunday after he announced he had received the shot. He claimed that a very small group among the crowd was behind the reaction.
The former president urged his supporters to get vaccine but maintained his opposition to vaccine mandates.
The COVID 19 initiative of the previous administration, called Operation Warp Speed, was a public-private partnership that accelerated the development, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines against the virus.
The first vaccine doses administered to frontline healthcare workers was administered on December 11, 2020, which resulted in the first emergency authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine on December 11, 2020.
The vaccines saved up to 140,000 American lives in Operation Warp Speed's first six months, the National Institutes of Health said in a report. The initiative has saved the economy $1.8 trillion, according to former leaders of the Trump administration's Council of Economic Advisers.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has reported 51,545, 991 COVID 19 cases and 812,069 deaths.