Jerome Adams Says Biden Admin Refused to Work With Trump Officials to Combat Vaccine Hesitancy

Former Trump administration Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Tuesday accused the White House of turning away high-profile conservatives who have offered to assist President Joe Biden in combating vaccine hesitancy.

Adams joined CNN Newsroom with host Ana Cabrera following Biden’s Tuesday speech about steps being taken by the federal government to mitigate the spread of the Omicron variant. During his remarks, Biden stopped short of attacking unvaccinated Americans, but did go after those he called “purveyors” of misinformation about vaccines.

Cabrera asked Adams what can be done to reach Americans who are hesitant to get vaccinated, and he placed a great deal of blame on the Biden White House, appearing to stun Cabrera with a claim that the current administration had previously closed the door on working with former Trump administration officials to reach out people who were not interested in getting inoculated.

“One of the things we need to do is find other people out there who can be representatives, who can be purveyors of positive information,” said Adams. “I’ll just be honest with you. I’ve told the White House, many people from the last administration have said to the White House, we want to help you, and we’ve been told we don’t want your help. They want to try to reach conservatives by only putting out their voices.”

Asked to expound upon the claim and identify who had refused help, Adams responded:

I don’t want to get into that, but I will tell you, they don’t want to work with people who are on the other side of the aisle. That is a problem. That is something that they could be doing more of, is reaching out to more conservatives to get positive messages out there. They could also be putting out more PSAs. So you saw me, Birx, Fauci, Redfield on TV, on the internet all the time when we were in the thick of the Covid pandemic. There’s more they could be doing to put out positive messages combatting that misinformation, and we’re all still wondering, where are all these PSAs that we could and should be seeing taking about how vaccines don’t cause infertility, talking about how vaccines actually help mothers have a safe and healthy pregnancy. Talking about how you should still get vaccinated if you’ve had Covid before. There’s more we could be doing to actually combat the misinformation in a productive way, instead of just pointing fingers.

Watch above, via CNN.