You really have to see this next clip.
I already told you yesterday and we just discussed in our previous clip Donald Trump's vaccine
executive order that he signed at yesterday's vaccine summit, which we don't understand.
Donald Trump's executive order says that the U.S. government will work to secure coronavirus
vaccine doses for the United States before other countries get them.
Now, it's not really clear what the enforcement of that would be.
It's not clear what enforcement is even legally possible.
It's not clear what authority the United States has to obtain vaccines for us before other
countries get them.
We weren't the only ones confused by this executive order.
And yesterday, Donald Trump's vaccine chief, who I'm actually more or less happy with,
he's been doing a relatively good job at not politicizing the vaccine program.
He's seemed immune, for lack of a better term, to pressure from pressure to say things that
he doesn't believe.
I'm talking about Dr. Moncef Slaoui.
He was interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos yesterday.
And you have to see this.
George Stephanopoulos says to him, What is Trump's vaccine executive order about?
Like what does it do?
And Slaoui doesn't even pretend.
He just says, I have no idea whatsoever.
He just sort of shrugs and raises his eyebrows.
He has no this is Trump's vaccine, chief.
No idea what Trump's executive order is about.
Check it out.
It's like a Greek tragedy.
Explain this executive order the president is going to be putting out.
I don't quite understand saying that foreign countries aren't going to be able to get the
vaccine until everybody here in the United States gets it.
It sounds like the problem is the opposite.
Right now, Pfizer has made deals with other countries that are going to limit the supply
here.
Frankly, I don't know.
And frankly, I'm saying out of this kind of comment, I don't know.
But you're the chief science adviser for Operation Warp Speed.
Our work is is rolling.
We have plans.
We feel that we can deliver the vaccines as needed.
So I don't know exactly what.
But this order is about just amazing optics.
Slaoui just washing his hands of this all together.
I have no idea.
I'm not involved in it, not even pretending to try to explain it.
But the key thing here is actually what George Stephanopoulos says, which is the problem
is the opposite.
Trump signing an executive order saying get us vaccines before other countries, thanks
to Trump turning down 100 million vaccine doses in the late summer.
Other countries are going to get vaccine doses before us.
The UK already vaccinating people as one example.
So the back story again, if you missed yesterday's show, I'll quickly remind you Trump was offered
back in late summer the opportunity to get 100 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine
secured for the United States.
And Trump said no.
And so Pfizer went and sold those doses to other countries as as they would obviously
do.
And that includes the U.K. and some European Union countries have also secured vaccines.
Now, we've learned that thanks to that decision, the U.S. is not likely to get a second tranche
of the Pfizer vaccine doses until June of 2021.
This is just because Trump turned down one hundred million doses.
So Trump is now panicking and he put together this completely flaccid, impotent executive
order, which appears to do nothing other than maybe make it look like he's doing something
to cover up that failure from the summer when he could simply have said, yeah, we'll take
the doses, of course.
And now you have vaccine chief, Dr. Moncef Slaoui on national TV saying, I have no idea
what that is.
That is about washing his hands completely and saying I'm not involved.
Now, one interesting thing is that you can tell fear of Trump is palpably waning as Trump
gets closer and closer to being an ex-president.
Slaoui himself might have answered this question the same way at any point.
But in total, when you look at other Republicans and other people ancillary to the Trump administration,
they seem more and more willing to just say things as they are, rather than bending over
backwards the way we saw them do for so long to pretend that what Trump is saying and doing
makes even an iota of sense.
Now, as far as the executive order, it again feels sort of like when Donald Trump's dad,
Fred Trump, was suffering from dementia and he'd go to his office and he would call people
on his phone, but the phone would only go to his secretary and he would shuffle around
stacks of paper and sign things that were completely meaningless, as if he was working.
Nobody's really paying attention anymore.
And Trump's executive order, it does nothing.
It's not even clear what the enforcement would or could possibly be.
We're getting into a very strange kind of lame duck period with Donald Trump.
And as a reminder, six weeks.
We have six weeks, I believe, to the day.
Right.
I think January 20th is a Wednesday.
I believe we are six weeks to the day of all of this all of this ending, and we will all
be much better for it.
Let's take a quick break.
Make sure you are following the show on Facebook, Facebook, dotcom, The David Pakman Show.
We will talk about John Ellis now having the virus.
And I have a bunch of other things to discuss
with you.