WASHINGTON – In front of Congress and under oath, the president’s own director of the Centers for Disease Control gave scientific testimony on masks.
“This face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID then when I take a COVID vaccine,” Dr. Robert Redfield said.
Redfield went on to testify that a coronavirus vaccine won’t be available for the general public until the middle of next year.
“If you’re asking me, when is it going to be generally available to the American public? Late second quarter, third quarter 2021,” he said.
Only hours later, President Donald Trump twice said on both topics that his own expert didn’t know what he was talking about.
“I think he made a mistake. It’s just incorrect information,” Trump said.
The president also promised that as soon as the vaccine is announced, “we are ready to go.”
It was another stunning dispute with the actual science of his own scientists that rival Joe Biden has been seizing.
“We can’t allow politics to interfere with the vaccine in any way,” Biden, the former vice president and now presidential nominee, said.
“Let me be clear, I trust vaccines, scientists, but (I) don’t trust Donald Trump.”
All of this on the heels of shockingly unfounded conspiracy theory claims coming from Trump’s own spokesperson at the agency leading the fight against coronavirus.
Michael Caputo said during a Facebook rant that “The scientists, the Deep State scientists, want America sick through November.”
Caputo, the top spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, was already facing allegations that he and his team pressured scientists to change weekly reports on the pandemic to make them more favorable to Trump.
Caputo has now announced he is taking a leave of absence, citing medical reasons.
Caputo also said in that Facebook video that he has been having health issues and that his “mental health has definitely failed.”
Amid all of this and allegations that the president’s coronavirus response has been failing, with nearly 200,000 Americans dead, Trump remained defiant.
A reporter at Trump’s press conference on Wednesday ask the president: “How can the American people trust you on the pandemic when you’re contradicting the head of the CDC?”
Trump’s response was: “Because of the great job we’ve done.”