White House demands FDA chief resign if COVID vaccine isn’t approved by day’s end: report

The White House continued to politicize the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday, according to a bombshell new report by The Washington Post.

"White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what happened," the newspaper reported. "The warning led the FDA to accelerate its timetable for clearing America’s first vaccine from Saturday morning to later Friday."

The demand came the same day that Trump attacked Hahn online.

"The warning, combined with the 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. Trump was also said to be upset that Britain cleared the vaccine before the United States, although the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been developed and reviewed in record time," The Post reported. "With the timetable apparently accelerated from Saturday morning, the FDA and Pfizer were rushing to complete the paperwork needed for the authorization, according to another individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t have authority to discuss the plans."

There are worries that the politicization of vaccines by the Trump White House could result in fewer Americans being vaccinated.

"The threat injects politics once more 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," the newspaper reported. "The Food and Drug Administration’s advisory committee reviewed the vaccine for more than eight hours Thursday and voted overwhelmingly in favor of using it in people age 16 and up. It is unclear whether a decision on the vaccine on a Friday night would do anything to speed up the delivery of the first vaccine doses."