It's Not That He Did Something. He Literally Did Nothing.

Seth Meyers hilariously mocks Fox News for desperately trying to turn everything Biden says into a scandalhttps://t.co/1KoZKvlOMI

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 18, 2021

 I've been hearing Trump should get credit for the vaccines, a claim coming even from non-FoxNews sources.  The record, I finally found, confirms my recollection of matters:

Donald Trump did not invent or develop the vaccines to combat Covid-19, despite his claim he should receive the credit. Ironically, immigrants played the crucial role in developing the vaccines, a group Trump as president has vilified. It’s fair to say if Trump administration immigration policies had been in place years earlier, including policies on international students, employment-based immigrants and H-1B and L-1 visa holders, the individuals instrumental in making the Covid-19 vaccines a reality would never have lived or worked in America.

After the recent election, Trump alleged that Pfizer withheld the results of the vaccine trials to hurt him politically, even though the pharmaceutical company did not receive the results of the trials until November 8, five days after Election Day (November 3). The following week, Moderna received the results of its vaccine trials. Both trials showed “vaccine efficacy” (effectiveness) of over 90%. The companies await emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to begin vaccine distribution.

On Thanksgiving, after alleging fraud in the general election, Trump took credit for the vaccines. “Trump also glancingly addressed the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 262,000 people in the United States, though mainly to brag,” reported Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post. In the Oval Office, Trump said, “The vaccines – and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine. . . . Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me.” (Emphasis added.)

The evidence shows Donald Trump had no role in creating the vaccines to fight Covid-19. There is nothing in the record that warrants him taking “credit” for the vaccines. A review of events shows immigrants and immigrant-led companies created the vaccines.

In January 2020, Moderna’s French-born CEO Stéphane Bancel, who came to the U.S. as an international student and later immigrated to America, led the company to design a Covid-19 vaccine in two days. On February 24, 2020, the company announced the release of “the first batch of mRNA-1273, the company’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus, for human use.” Vials were shipped to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Phase 1 study.

It's here I point out that in January 2020 not only was there no "Operation Warp Speed," but Trump was still denying there was even a virus. And of course Pfizer paired up with BioNTech, a German company, to come up with the vaccine now circulating in my veins.

Further, Trump had an opportunity to buy as many vaccines as he wanted from pharmaceutical companies. He refused. By contrast, when Biden came into office he began buying up vaccines and implementing the Defense Production Act to get more made. It meant that people could be vaccinated quicker and the country could get back to normal faster. Trump was never fully able to understand that the economy was linked to the virus and the safety that people feel.

Biden bought the vaccines and made sure they got out to people.  Trump took credit for what he didn't do, didn't care if the vaccine was distributed or not, made sure he got his shot but didn't want to tell anybody about it, and didn't care whether anybody beyond him was protected.  But sure, he deserves some credit from the Biden White House.

Just not the credit he thinks he is due.