PolitiFact declares claims Biden, Harris distrusted COVID vaccine under Trump 'false' despite past rhetoric
Kamala Harris told CNN that getting a vaccine approved by the Trump administration would be 'an issue for all of us'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}PolitiFact appears to be shielding President Biden and Vice President Harris from criticism over their past rhetoric expressing distrust in the coronavirus vaccine during the Trump administration.
Amid the Biden administration's struggle to vaccinate Americans, a video surfaced comments made during the 2020 election cycle by the then-Democratic ticket that cast doubt in a vaccine developed under President Trump.
Biden suggested back in August that any vaccine that comes along is "not likely to go through all the tests that need to be done and the trials that are needed to be done."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, ‘Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK'?" Biden said in a September interview.
Biden repeatedly indicated only if there was enough "transparency" would he take the vaccine and that the "American people should not have confidence" in the vaccine developed by the Trump administration if his concerns weren't addressed.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Harris was heard during a CNN interview that getting a vaccine that's approved by the Trump administration would be "an issue for all of us" and "if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it" during the vice presidential debate.
However, PolitiFact issued a so-called "fact-check" with the headline "Biden, Harris distrusted Trump with COVID-19 vaccines, not the vaccines themselves."
PolitiFact contributing writer Tom Kertscher insisted the clips used in the video were "selectively edited to take the statements out of context."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The parts that are left out make clear that Biden and Harris were raising questions not about the vaccines themselves, but about then-President Donald Trump’s rollout of the vaccines and the risk that the effort would become rushed or politicized," Kertscher wrote on Friday.
"Trump was publicly touting the promise of a rapidly developed COVID-19 vaccine as early as March 2020, when fears of a global pandemic were just beginning to flare, and said he was urging researchers working on the vaccine to ‘speed it up.’ Scientists and drug makers, meanwhile, were urging more caution on the timeline and said they were emphasizing safety and effectiveness over speed," he later explained.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Kertscher then listed all of the quotes featured in the video including additional contexts regarding each of the individual comments.
For PolitiFact's "ruling," Kertscher concluded the video "was selectively edited to leave out the context of their statements." and that Biden Harris simply raised doubts about "Trump’s trustworthiness, his ability to roll out the vaccines safely and the risk of political influence over vaccine development."
"We rate the video False," PolitiFact declared.