Just one day in office, President Joe Biden already got into his first heated exchange with the mainstream media.
The Biden administration invited reporters to the Oval Office to record Biden signing a number of executive orders on Thursday. When a reporter questioned whether Biden’s vaccine goals were good enough, the 46th president snapped.
“You set the goal at 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days. Is that high enough?” The Associated Press’ Zeke Miller asked. “Shouldn’t we set the bar higher? That is, basically, where the U.S. is right now.”
Biden snapped back at Miller.
“When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible,” Biden bluntly responded. “C’mon!”
“Give me a break, man.” he continued. “It’s a good start, 100 million.”
At that, Biden abruptly stood up and walked out of the room.
The CDC reports that the Trump administration had vaccinated 14 million people by Wednesday’s inauguration, and approximately 900,000 people a day are being vaccinated. Biden’s goal of 100 million vaccines by the end of April represents only a minor increase of 10 percent, NBC News noted.
“Listen, this is a concerted effort by the new team to downtalk where things are so they can look like heroes when they come in and just carry forward the momentum that we have established,” former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News. “We’re at over 900,000 vaccinations per day.”
“We will have distributed 250 million doses of vaccine by the end of April,” Azar said. “If they’ve only done 100 million vaccinations by then, it will be a tragic squandering of the opportunity that we have handed them.”
"My biggest regret is how quickly it became point-scoring between the parties instead of all just growing together for the good of the American people." @SecAzar reflects on the pandemic response and discusses how vaccine rollout will change under the Biden administration pic.twitter.com/4ewlhuyf70
— America's Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) January 18, 2021