CNN’s Acosta: Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’ Has Become ‘Operation Flat Tire’

CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta said Tuesday during “The Situation Room” that President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative on coronavirus vaccines had become “operation flat tire.”

Acosta said, “I spoke with a member of Joe Biden’s COVID advisory committee, and she said part of the issue was how much was left up to the states. President Trump seems to be tweeting exactly that. He is being defensive about this and saying, ‘It’s up to the states to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the federal government. We have not only developed the vaccines, including putting up the money to move the process along quickly but gotten them to the states.’ Kaitlan, this Operation Warp Speed has become operation flat tire in terms of getting vaccines into people’s arms. Was this by design? What do you make of the president pushing this off on the states again?”

White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins said, “Well, it’s a pattern that we saw that the president pursued when it came to testing, and there were questions over why there wasn’t sufficient testing in the U.S.? The president said everyone who wanted one could get one several months ago, of course, which wasn’t true. We saw similar issues with PPE. These are both things that the White House took at that time and then tried to turn around on to the states.”

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