Report: The White House Threatens to Fire FDA Chief If He Doesn’t Approve the Pfizer Vaccine Today

Hey, quick question for the group: Say you were the president of the most powerful nation on Earth, which recently broke the record for the most COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and just this week saw more people die from the virus than did on 9/11. Two hugely promising, life-saving vaccines are extremely close to being approved by the Food and Drug Administration, with one reportedly set to receive the green light at early as Friday night. At the same time, the vaccine issue is extremely fraught, with a not-insubstantial number of people saying they might not get it, and it’s more than clear that your politicizing of the issue—and really, your association with it, period—is not helping. Do you (a) step back and let the scientists and health experts take the lead, knowing it’s probably the best way to ensure that, once the vaccine is available, most of the country gets it, or (b) threaten to fire the head of the FDA for not approving it, like, hours before he was going to anyway? If your name is Donald “The ‘J’ stands for Genius” Trump, you’re obviously going to have to go with (b).

The Washington Post reports the outrageous though somehow unsurprising though nevertheless outrageous news that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn on Friday that he must resign if his agency doesn’t approve Pfizer’s vaccine by the end of the day, according to people familiar with the matter. The threat came as Trump took to Twitter to declare the FDA is “a big, old, slow turtle,” while telling Hahn to “get the dam vaccines out NOW.” He added: “Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!”

According to the Post, the agency was planning to clear the vaccine on Saturday morning, meaning Trump apparently couldn’t wait mere hours for them to do so, but pushed up its timeline to Friday night after the threat from the White House. Which may be one of the dumbest things to come out of an administration that has set the record for dumb, misguided, moronic moves over the last four years. Per the Post:

The White House actions once again inject politics into the vaccine race, potentially undermining public trust in one of the most crucial tools to end the pandemic that has killed more than 290,000 Americans. It comes in the midst of a process that had been designed to show no shortcuts were taken in reviewing the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine as surveys show many people remain unsure whether they will get the shots.

The two-shot vaccine, which has been shown to be 95% effective in randomized trials involving tens of thousands of people, has already been cleared by Britain, Canada, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials have engaged in a more rigorous review process that they believe will boost public confidence.

Meadows’s threat and the president’s tweets constituted the latest attack by Trump, who has complained vociferously that the vaccine wasn’t authorized before Election Day, blaming it on the ‘deep state’ inside the agency that he accused of working against his reelection.

Because Trump is a reality-TV-show host who does everything for show, the threat may result in him being able to tweet that the vaccine has been approved slightly earlier than the FDA had planned, but it won’t actually mean Americans will be able to be vaccinated any sooner. According to a person familiar with distribution plans, “the timing of delivery of doses to vaccination sites or their readiness to give people shots” will likely be unchanged.

The White House declined the Post’s request for comment. Hahn claimed in a statement, “This is an untrue representation of the phone call with the Chief of Staff. The FDA was encouraged to continue working expeditiously on Pfizer-BioNTech’s EUA request. FDA is committed to issuing this authorization quickly, as we noted in our statement this morning.”

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