“The deep state, or whatever, at the FDA makes it very difficult for drug companies to get people to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” Trump said.
tweeted, continuing to press on his unfounded theory that there is a “deep state” embedded in the government bureaucracy working against his reelection.
He accused the agency of delaying a vaccine for the virus until after the autumn elections, tweeting, “Of course they hope to delay the response until after November 3. Must focus on speed, and save lives!” Trump ended his tweet by tagging the Twitter account of FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, whom he nominated last year to take up the role.
Hahn assured Americans earlier this month that the agency “will not cut corners” to approve a fax.
CNN has reached out to the FDA for comment.
Chamber member Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s tweet “very scary” and “a very dangerous statement” on Saturday, saying “even for him it went further.”
“The FDA has a responsibility to approve drugs, to judge their safety and effectiveness, not by a White House statement on FDA speed and politicization,” Pelosi told reporters at Capitol Hill.
Trump has promised that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year, although vaccinologists told CNN that timeline is unrealistic. And his latest remarks will not deceive the fears that some experts and Americans have that the administration will rush to prepare a vaccine at the expense of science and security.
A CNN poll in May found that one-third of Americans said they would not attempt to vaccinate against Covid-19, even if the vaccine is widely available and low-cost.
The FDA does not conduct the trials itself, but instead oversees the people who do so, according to the agency. As CNN previously reported, one vaccine candidate, developed by Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, moved last month to Phase 3 clinical trials.
Trump has been under the guise of the entire pandemic or has been rejected by government health experts, including FDA officials.
Trump promoted the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment, even though the FDA warned the public that the drugs should only be used in hospitals as clinical trials because they can kill or cause serious side effects. in June, the agency introduced its authorization for emergency use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for the treatment of coronavirus, saying that the drugs are unlikely to be effective in treating the virus based on the latest scientific evidence.
After the FDA over time took a stand on its authorization for emergency use for recovery time plasma, the president also announced on Wednesday that it could have a “political decision”.
“Because you have a lot of people who do not want to rush things because they want to do it after November 3,” Trump claimed.
The president is no stranger to publicly questioning the medical advice of his administration’s top health officials, or taking aim at Twitter.
Although he claims to have a good relationship with the nation’s top expert, expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, Trump called Fauci “a bit of an alarmist”, retweeted a post calling Fauci a “fraud”, and the White House appeared to be making a concerted effort to discredit Fauci early in the pandemic.
Trump also criticized Dr. Deborah Birx earlier this month after the White House coronavirus task force coordinator warned that the pandemic was “extremely widespread” in the United States.
CNN’s Sarah Westwood, Ali Main, Ali Zaslav and Clare Foran contributed to this report.
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