Nevermind that Health and Human Services nominee Xavier Becerra hasn't even been confirmed yet, CNN's Dana Bash continually badgered him to give a precise timeline on the Biden administration's plans for the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.
The State of the Union host pressed Becerra on the Biden's administration's plans to clean up the mess left for them by the Trump administration, who failed to cooperate with the Biden transition team, and left them with no plan whatsoever for a distribution strategy, other than to just toss everything to the states, just as they did from the start with their failed handling of the pandemic.
Bash asked Becerra not once, but five times to give her a timeline on how long most Americans are going to have to wait before they finally get vaccinated, and as Becerra reminded her, maybe she should wait for him to actually be confirmed first before trying to pin him down as she did here.
Bash asked Becerra whether Biden's goal of 100 million vaccine doses in 100 days was "ambitious enough." Becerra replied that they're "certainly going to need to do even more but before we do the ambitious part we got to get everything working together because we just spent the first question and answer talking about how what we inherited didn't work."
After Bash asked what they're going to do to address the long lines we're seeing in places like California, and people having appointments canceled due to shortages of the vaccine, Becerra explained that "You can't just tell the states and the local governments, here's some vaccines. Now you go do it. No. We have to coordinate and provide the resources." and that "Biden's plan provides for 100,000 new health care workers to get out there to all of the states to help."
After being pushed again three more times on the timeline and whether we can expect vaccines for everyone by summer, Becerra finally reminded Bash that he hasn't been confirmed yet.
“Let’s put it this way,” Becerra responded. "The president, before he had an opportunity to be in the Oval Office for one day had already committed a hundred million vaccine shots in a hundred days. That’s based on the information they were able to gather. Once we’re in the House taking care of business, we’ll be able to give more precision, but you’ve got to give us a chance to figure out what’s going on in the cockpit that’s causing this plane to nosedive so severely.”
Biden was just sworn in less than a week ago, they inherited no vaccination plan from the Trump administration, but our corporate media is ready to pile on to the Biden administration before they've even had a chance to figure out what they've inherited and before his cabinet members have even been confirmed. Bravo.
