Democrats are "playing politics" with the coronavirus vaccine by sowing doubts about it, but President Donald Trump has "torn through bureaucratic barriers so we can get a safe, effective, and timely vaccine," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday.
"What you see Democrats doing is very dangerous," McEnany said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "They are literally playing politics with people's lives here."
She added that Trump is listening to scientists, and the White House initiative, Operation Warp Speed, has been helped by Trump's push against bureaucracy.
"Compare that to Obama-Biden, where they promised a vaccine," she said, referring to the 2009 H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic. "They vastly underperformed."
McEnany also responded to Democrat nominee Joe Biden's attack on Trump about the economy, after the former vice president said Trump will be the "only president in modern history to end up with fewer jobs at the end of his term than existed in America when he began his term."
"Let's start with the fact that Obama-Biden oversaw the slowest economic recovery since World War II," said McEnany. "The CBO [Congressional Budget Office] told us we were supposed to have double-digit unemployment until the end of the year. We are in single-digits right now."
She also argued against congressional Democrats pushing to roll back Trump's payroll tax forgiveness plans because of worries over Social Security.
"We're not touching Social Security because the money is coming out of the general fund to pay for this," said McEnany, adding that the payroll tax cuts benefit middle-income and low-income Americans.
McEnany also accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of "playing politics" with COVID-19 relief as lawmakers head back to work today.
"She's been fundamentally unserious every step of the way here," she said. "Democrats want a bailout for blue states."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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