Reports that the Biden administration is planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to push the latest round of the COVID-19 vaccine booster to low-income communities would be a waste of money, Dr. Ben Carson told Newsmax on Thursday.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that only 16.7% of Americans have received the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 booster shot. The Biden administration has a stockpile of the booster shots that could go to waste once a new booster is rolled out later this year, The New York Times reported April 4.
"It is a waste of money because I think a lot of people in those low-income communities are smarter than you think they are," Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, told "John Bachmann Now." "They've seen that this thing is not working. They're starting to hear about some of the complications, which are massive, and they also recognize the way you take care of issues like this is that we have a medical system in existence, it's the best in the world, work this out with your physician.
"All the things that we've learned about how to treat this, we don't need to be pushing these vaccines, which are doing one good thing, and that's making a huge amount of money for some of these companies."
Carson also was asked about Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, R-Ill., writing a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts asking him to testify regarding ethics reforms in the Supreme Court.
Democrats are going after Justice Clarence Thomas in the wake of a story from news site ProPublica about Thomas' relationship with real estate magnate and Republican donor Harlan Crow, and that Thomas failed to disclose trips he and his wife took at Crow's expense.
"It's not particularly surprising because for the left, the only thing worse than Satan is a Black conservative," Carson said. "Any opportunity that they can persecute Justice Thomas they will be doing it. Where is the cause for Hunter Biden to come in and testify before the committee? That's so obvious that laws are being broken, values are being ruptured. Nobody is saying anything about it, and it's showing that we have a two-tiered [justice] system and it's ruining the faith that our people have in our system, and it's a serious, serious issue.
"I wish people could just put the politics behind and recognize that if you're talking about a threat to our system, this is it. This is what Benjamin Franklin was talking about. When he was asked, 'What do we have here, sir, a monarchy or republic?' He said, 'a republic, if you can keep it.' "
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.