President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at former President Donald Trump during his first visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters since taking office.
“Science is back. All kidding aside, think about it. For the longest time, not just as it relates to the CDC, but science… science was used as sort of an appendage to anything else we were talking about but it’s back,” Biden said on Friday.
He added, “The public is thankful to you because it’s about science. That’s what they understand. They understand. And we’re not going back to the old days, even if tomorrow the whole administration changed. I think you’ve changed things. You’ve changed them in a way that are going to make everybody healthier in this country.”
Biden suggested the CDC is “prepared to meet” a crisis because “you speak truth and science to power.”
Watch his remarks below:
"Science is back," President Biden says while visiting CDC headquarters after his admin. administered 100,000,000 vaccines. "When we have a crisis, you're prepared to meet it, because you speak truth and science to power." pic.twitter.com/0d6wBS13uy
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 19, 2021
His comments were seemingly referring to the former president’s failure to listen to public health officials’ warnings amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Deborah Birx recently reflected on the moment Trump suggested potentially using disinfectant to treat COVID-19, as IJR reported.
“Frankly, I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” Birx said during ABC’s “The Breakdown” Monday. “I still think about it every day.”
She added, “You can see how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was. Those of you who have served in the military know that there are discussions you have in private with your commanding officers and there’s discussions you had in public.”
During Tuesday night’s phone call interview on Fox News, Trump advised Americans to get vaccinated, as IJR reported.
“I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly,” Trump said.
He added, “But, you know, again, we have our freedoms, and we have to live by that, and I agree with that also.”
