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Did Kayleigh McEnany Claim Obama Promised a COVID Vaccine?
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Did Kayleigh McEnany Claim Obama Promised a COVID Vaccine?

No.

Alec Dent
Sep 11, 2020
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Did Kayleigh McEnany Claim Obama Promised a COVID Vaccine?
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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.”

Twitter avatar for @tribelawLaurence Tribe @tribelaw
.@PressSec says Obama & Biden “promised a vaccine” for Covid-19 in 2016? Although Covid-19 first appeared in 2020? wut?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

wut https://t.co/PXoQ6UFDHw

September 8th 2020

6,826 Retweets17,900 Likes

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.” 

Twitter avatar for @atruparAaron Rupar @atrupar
wut
Image

September 8th 2020

1,465 Retweets7,789 Likes

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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Did Kayleigh McEnany Claim Obama Promised a COVID Vaccine?
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Mary Stine
Sep 11, 2020

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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JMD
Sep 11, 2020

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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