Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is sharing what former President Donald Trump told him leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
During clips from “The Carlos Watson Show” provided exclusively to The Hill in advance, Watson asked Bourla what his experience was with Trump as the former president was facing pressure himself to push out a vaccine.
“The president was calling me and he was making very clear what he would like to see sooner rather than later but never pressed me to do something that would be inappropriate with a vaccine,” Bourla said.
Asking Bourla how much pressure he faced to “get it done,” the Pfizer CEO replied, “In the few times that he was telling me that we need to do it fast — first he would say, ‘We need to do it quickly; people are dying,’ and then also he would add, ‘Of course it will help me also in the election, but people is the important thing.’”
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Bourla insisted he made it clear to Trump and the Biden campaign the company would “move with the speed of science.”
He stressed he wanted to do it “quickly” but the important thing for him was “the pressure of the billions of people that suddenly had invested their entire hopes on us, and we had to deliver.”
When talking about the rollout of the vaccine, Bourla explained, “I was not happy with the speed as all Americans as all citizens of the world. It happened not because everybody was incompetent, it was because it’s very complicated.”
Biden announced on Tuesday he would be moving up the eligibility date of the vaccine to April 19.
