MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace claimed after Sen. Tim Scott's (R-SC) rebuttal to President Joe Biden's Congressional speech that Operation Warp Speed did nothing to get COVID-19 shots into arms of Americans.
While Biden touted the number of Americans who have been vaccinated since he has been president, he failed to mention how the groundwork had already been laid through Operation Warp Speed. In his rebuttal, Scott pointed out the current success of Americans having three different options for a COVID vaccine in under a year, when the pandemic went global is a credit to the Trump administration.
According to Wallace, Scott's speech was not based in reality.
"This is a speech delivered from a planet where facts don’t matter, which is where the current Republican Party resides, so it’s not really his fault. But it is his responsibility to get his facts straight. He said this, 'That Biden had inherited a country that had already rounded the bend on COVID.' 4,000 people a day were dying in January, so I don’t know, again, on what planet we had rounded the bend," Wallace said.
"And Operation Warp Speed didn’t do anything to get a needle into an arm. So a lot of disinformation. It felt almost scripted by someone close to [President Trump] who wanted that revision of history," Wallace continued.
By the time of Biden's inauguration on January 20, COVID vaccines had already been distributed and administered to people since December. According to the Center for Disease Control, vaccination rates were just under one million people when Biden was sworn into office. Those involved with Operation Warp Speed handed over their responsibilities to the Biden administration in late February of this year, where over 2 million Americans were being vaccinated on an almost daily basis.