Speaking from the Brady Briefing room Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany slammed reporters for a number of false stories surrounding the timing of a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine.
"Yesterday the United States witnesses a medical miracle. The first doses of a COVID vaccine were administered front line workers across the country. The President promised a safe and effective vaccine in record time and President Trump delivered. Earlier this year we heard from several news outlets and so called fact checks that President Trump would need 'a miracle to be right.' That was an NBC News article. We were told according to Healthline 'a vaccine will take more than a year to develop.' USA Today warned us that 'despite medical researchers progress the vaccine was more than a year away.' And National Geographic even told us that achieving a vaccine within a year to 18-months would be absolutely unprecedented.' These reports deserve their own factcheck: False," McEnany said. "These are vaccines that he oversaw the development of, he has great confidence in them and he wants to see all Americans get this vaccine and he wants to see the most vulnerable among us get it first. But absolutely he will be encouraging, encouraging Americans to take this."
She also went after news outlets, specifically the New York Times, for failing to cover Democrat Representative Eric Swalwell's connection to an alleged Chinese spy named Fang Fang.
"There was no coverage however of Swalwell being the one implicated with not Russia, but China. In fact the New York Times website, as of this morning, had not one result for Eric Swalwell's ties to Chinese spies. Not one result. And when the Swalwell story broke, guess how many minutes of coverage it got on ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CBS? Zero. CNN devoted three minutes and 16 seconds to it, however it was covered on Fox," she continued.