Did Kayleigh McEnany Claim Obama Promised a COVID Vaccine?

No.

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A viral tweet from legal scholar Laurence Tribe claims that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany “‘promised a vaccine’ for Covid-19 in 2016.”

Tribe’s tweet was itself a quote tweet of a viral tweet from Vox associate editor of politics and policy Aaron Rupar, who shared the clip with the simple caption, “wut.” The 12-second clip shows McEnany saying: “[Trump] tore through bureaucratic barriers so we can get a safe, effective, and timely vaccine. Once again, compare that to Obama/Biden, where they promised a vaccine, they vastly underperformed.” 

The clip in question comes from a longer interview that McEnany did on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning. In discussing the government’s work in creating a coronavirus vaccine through the expedited process known as Operation Warp Speed, McEnany said: “We have renowned experts over at Operation Warp Speed that are working on this, President Trump tore through bureaucratic barriers so we can get a safe, effective, and timely vaccine. Once again, compare that to Obama/Biden, where they promised a vaccine, they vastly underperformed, and you have Biden’s advisor back in the Obama/Biden days saying it’s a pure miracle, fortuity, that swine flu wasn’t a mass casualty event of our time.”

When taken in its entirety, it’s clear that McEnany’s comments about Obama and Biden’s vaccine response were referring to the Obama administration’s response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, not the coronavirus pandemic. 

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

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  1. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    I will never cease to be amazed at the Twittery decline of a competent legal mind like Laurence Tribe.

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    Jesse Blankenship

    It amazes me how much " whataboutism" exists even on this site. I'm not voting for him and my reasons are set in stone. This correction in no way triggers me or justifies this disaster of an administration or seriously impugns a previous one. It is what it is. Focus people, come on !

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    1. Avatar photo
      Idontdocute

      There is no morning dispatch and we have to work it out the grumpies somewhere. It is now Sunday morning and only 19 comments so far. As long as we don’t start throwing Cherrios at each other we could probably give this one a pass.

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      Jake

      This is called a non sequitur: a comment that has nothing to do with the article.

      This is a simple fact check. Not a persuasion article, nor a “whataboutism”.

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  3. downhillfromhere

    Thanks for the good clarification, Alec D.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Well, everyone’s lifting everything out of context these days.

    Thanks for the fact check Alex.

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  5. Mary Stine

    No mention of the superb handling of Ebola by the Obama admin, a much deadlier disease.
    Please find me the oddball professor inventing a spray adsorbant against hot air caused only by human bloviating. Then it could turn into bubble gum upon encountering lies and plaster itself onto the offending mouths.

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      Ignatius J. Reilly

      The comparisons of the handling of different administrations is completely irrelevant. It was irrelevant when Kayleigh McEnany tried to draw conclusions, it's also irrelevant to prop up Obama's handling of a completely different disease. The varied handling of this thing around the world and the utter failure of every single developed country to adequately deal with it tells me that there is almost nothing that can be done by national governments short of sealing people into their individual homes. Individual action is key. Also, Trump can be held responsible for completely dividing us, name-calling, blaming his own administration officials, generally holding three sides of every issue-coin depending on the day, and also mouthing off when he should be calm acting in (largely) the way his administration officials have until now. Sad.

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      Victor Clairmont

      Ebola has to be transmitted by coming into contact with someone directly, like exchanging bodily fluids. While certainly far more deadly, it is very hard to get. There are around 1k cases a year. At the height of the epidemicof 2014-2016, almost 30k people were infected and 11,325 were killed. 99.9% outside the US. 11 people got it in the US and 2 died.

      https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html

      Covid is airborne. So, they are not really comparable.

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      1. Mary Stine

        thanks, I had forgotten that it is not airborne. My point, however, was that President Obama quickly assembled a team of scientists and epidemiologists and other experts,
        took their advice and acted swiftly to keep Ebola outside the US. He did this without fanfare, grandstanding, blaming other cultures or countries, lying about the hazards, or getting in the way of real science with ridiculous suggestions.

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          Victor Clairmont

          I think you mean H1N1? Swine Flu?

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          1. Avatar photo
            Stephanie

            I saw that also--she said "swine flu." But swine flu was back in the 1980's and famous for the vaccine that people rushed to get, and then many people (including my nursing supervisor at the hospital I worked at) were paralyzed by Guillain-Barré syndrome, from the vaccine.

            She'd have done better to not mention swine flu while at the same time praising the president for trying to rush vaccine approvals.

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  6. JMD

    She's still lying. Trump is not going to be able to deliver a safe, effective (inasmuch as any of these types of vaccines are "effective" given the mutation rates) vaccine any faster than it could have been delivered without Trump.

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      Stephanie

      Her boasting is a little premature.

      As I recall, in 2009, H1N1 appeared in April, too late to be included in the Fall flu vaccines, which are started once viruses circulating in the Southern Hemisphere, and predicted to come to the US in the Fall, are identified. That certainly wasn't Obama's fault. I believe the H1N1 vaccine was out by early 2010. But H1N1 hadn't turned out to be as virulent and deadly as people feared, and the flu season was almost over, so it actually didn't matter that much. So you can't make any comparison, it's like apples & oranges. The important thing is that Obama did not attempt to politicize the flu or the vaccine.

      And as we speak, Astra Zeneca's Phase 3 trials have been suspended because of a very serious neurologic adverse event. Vaccine development cannot be rushed because ultimately people will not get an immunization they have even the slightest reason to think is unsafe.

      So, very foolish to brag about Trump "tearing through bureaucratic barriers." Clinical trials, which he was attempting to shorten, are not some mindless bureaucracy.

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        rlritt

        Exactly. Everything is a contest to him. And his only response is how can cheat and win.

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    2. Bob the Original

      And you know this.....how?!?!? Vaccine development is typically ~4 years

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    Colin L.

    If there is any truth to the "fake news" accusation, Aaron Rupar is a great example.

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