Mitch McConnell Says Biden Is Spinning a Vaccine Walkback as ‘Ambitious,’ With Media’s Quiet Assist

In a floor speech on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked President Joe Biden‘s coronavirus address, calling it a “walkback” from comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci last month.

“Where the Biden administration is continuing to help streamline distribution, they should of course get some credit,” McConnell said addressing the speed of getting vaccines to the public, “but their efforts to sprint to the front of this year-long campaign should not fool anybody.”

“The president announced another supposedly audacious goal on Thursday; that all adults in all 50 states should be eligible to schedule vaccinations by May 1st,” he continued. “Here’s the problem: Dr. Fauci said a month ago we’d be there by April.”

McConnell then read a quote from Fauci, speaking on NBC’s Today, saying that by April it would be “open season” for getting the first dose, and that “namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category can start to get vaccinated.”

In fact, in that appearance, Dr. Fauci said he was “virtually certain” of his timeline.

“That was Dr. Fauci’s prediction last month,” said McConnell after reading a portion of the quote.

“So the president’s announcement of May 1st wasn’t ambitious good news,” he said. “It was actually a walkback.”

Naturally, he added in a dig at the media over the comment.

“Something tells me that if the last administration had contradicted dr. Fauci and pushed a vaccine milestone back a whole month, we might have heard about it from the media,” he said.

That’s probably true. The media wouldn’t just have reported it, but made dramatic hay if Trump had taken an important and optimistic milestone set by Dr. Fauci and walked it back.

But then, to be fair, something tells me that if Trump had pushed such a vaccine milestone by a whole month, it wouldn’t have been in the direction of caution.

Here is Sen. McConnell’s full floor speech.

Clips courtesy of C-SPAN and NBC.

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