‘Clear Up This Mess’: Trump Demands Big Pharma ‘Justify the Success’ of COVID Shots
President Donald Trump on Monday announced on Truth Social that manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments must immediately make public all data about their products.
President Donald Trump demanded that pharmaceutical companies “Justify the success of their various Covid Drugs,” in a Labor Day post on Truth Social.
“I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public,” Trump posted.
He said manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments must immediately make public all data about their products, and suggested companies will have to answer for any problems discovered in the data.
“I want them to show them NOW … and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” he wrote.
He said the lack of disclosure has made it difficult for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to evaluate the vaccines.
Trump wrote:
“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. … They go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work.”
Last month, the CDC announced a sweeping review of COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy. The “COVID-19 Immunization Workgroup” is housed under the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It’s led by one of ACIP’s members, Retsef Levi, Ph.D., professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Trump’s statement may ‘portend a greater truth-telling’
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and a staunch advocate for vaccines, agreed with Trump’s call for transparency.
In a post on X, Cassidy wrote: “We need to know what the data says and where it is coming from, so the CDC and HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] can make the best decisions.”
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said Trump’s statement may “portend a greater truth-telling about these products.” She added:
“CHD believes the COVID-19 injections should be removed from the marketplace, given their record of danger and ineffectiveness. In reality, they are novel gene therapies, not vaccines. Peer-reviewed science has shown that they have caused excess mortality and disability since their introduction.”
Internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker said Trump’s statement was “momentous” and “a remarkable departure from his former insistence that Operation Warp Speed was a great success.” Baker said:
“His comments indicate that he no longer has confidence in the information he has been getting from drug companies on the COVID shots. He indicates that Pharma has not been forthcoming and transparent with their data with respect to the public.”
Trump’s remarks “leave the door wide open for a complete and total re-evaluation of the legitimacy of Operation Warp Speed, the COVID-19 shots and effectively, the whole COVID-19 response,” Baker said.
Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper said an increasing number of people are questioning mainstream vaccine narratives, due to Big Pharma corruption and the failure of Operation Warp Speed, which he called “a giant science experiment.”
He said:
“Trump is demanding transparency from Pfizer, a company with a long history of corruption and fraud. In 2009, Pfizer paid a record $2.3 billion settlement for illegally marketing drugs like Bextra, one of the largest healthcare fraud settlements in U.S. history. This is the same company we were told to trust blindly during the pandemic.”
Attorney Rick Jaffe said the promotion of the COVID-19 shots by Big Pharma has failed, as the public “continues to lose confidence in the old guard vaccine model.”
“Once a president calls for answers, it becomes much harder for CDC, FDA and the drugmakers to keep stonewalling,” he said. “The American people deserve transparency, and this may finally be the moment when accountability starts.”
New COVID vaccine rules create confusion, but ‘change is a messy process’
Last week, Kennedy said in a Cabinet meeting that HHS is on track to announce the findings of an ongoing study on the causes of autism this month.
Trump responded that “there has to be something artificially causing this, meaning a drug or something.” He said if Kennedy could get to the root of the problem, the administration would be able to do something to address it. “I look forward to that press conference,” Trump said. “That’s going to be a great thing.”
On Aug. 27, the White House confirmed the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, after she refused to resign.
Also on Aug. 27, Kennedy announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ended emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines, restricting the shots to people at higher risk for severe illness. The vaccines will continue to be available to everyone, in consultation with their physicians.
The changes to the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation prompted CVS and Walgreens to limit access to the vaccines. Some states, including New Mexico, are considering adopting their own COVID-19 vaccine guidance.
“The confusion around COVID-19 shots and access to them through pharmacies is regrettable but not surprising. Change is a messy process,” Holland said.
Some pharmacies now require prescriptions for COVID vaccines
In remarks shared with ABC News, Brigid Groves, vice president of professional affairs at the American Pharmacists Association, said that in 18 states and the District of Columbia, pharmacists can administer vaccines only to people who qualify under CDC and FDA guidelines.
CVS has stopped administering the COVID-19 vaccines in three states — Massachusetts, Nevada and New Mexico. In 13 states, CVS now requires a prescription to administer the shot, even for people who qualify for the vaccine under current CDC and FDA guidelines.
According to The New York Times, Walgreens now requires prescriptions in 16 states, although its list differs from that of CVS.
In May, Kennedy announced changes to the COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for children.
The CDC now recommends “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and providers for healthy children ages 6 months to 17 years. The agency changed its guidance for pregnant women from “recommended” to “no guidance.”
COVID-19 shots are now fully licensed only for people at higher risk from COVID-19, including everyone over age 65, and the following groups:
Pfizer: people ages 5-64 at higher risk from COVID-19.
Moderna: people ages 6 months to 64 years at high risk for severe COVID-19.
Novavax: people ages 12-64 at increased risk of COVID-19.
An HHS spokesperson told The Defender that “HHS is not limiting access” to the COVID-19 vaccine, which remains “available for anyone who chooses it in consultation with their healthcare provider.”
According to CDC data, 71.5% of COVID-19 shots were administered in pharmacies and drugstores during the 2023-2024 respiratory virus season.
Jaffe said the limited availability of the COVID-19 shots in pharmacies shows how much the ground has shifted. “For the first time, drugmakers and their allies know they’re going to have to answer real questions.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, said pharmacy chains are likely trying to avert risk by restricting access to the COVID-19 vaccines. She said:
“Pharmacy chains don’t want any liability landing on themselves. Walgreens is already in a financial hotspot. I imagine they fear that, having overworked their pharmacists and pharmacy assistants, the staff will make mistakes and vaccinate people for whom they will not be reimbursed, and could have liability besides.”
According to Forbes, CVS and Walgreens said they will begin offering COVID-19 shots in all states once they have received approval from ACIP.
ACIP is scheduled to meet Sept. 18 to vote on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for the upcoming cold and flu season. ABC News reported the meeting is “potentially up in the air,” as Cassidy called for its postponement after Monarez’s firing.
In June, Kennedy retired all 17 members of ACIP to eliminate conflicts of interest. Two days later, Kennedy named eight researchers and physicians to the committee. One nominee declined to participate.
Linda Simoni-Wastila, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, said the recent “chaos” at the CDC “further exposes the murky process surrounding the hasty ‘approval’ and deployment of the vaccines.”
“If our country is ever to trust the CDC, FDA, the National Institutes of Health and other government institutions, then exposing the truth is imperative,” she said.
New Mexico seeks to ‘remove barriers’ to COVID vaccine access
On Saturday, the New Mexico Department of Health issued an order directing the department to work with the New Mexico Board of Pharmacy “to remove barriers and ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines at pharmacies across the state.”
Robert Nott, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Health, told NPR affiliate KUNM that the department would work to “amend the regulations” where ACIP recommendations are required for pharmacists to administer the vaccine.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said, “Public health authority in the U.S. is at the state level,” allowing states to override federal recommendations. However, “this effort by the state of New Mexico is foolish at best given the extremely poor track record of COVID shots in terms of safety and efficacy,” he said.
Attorney Greg Glaser said states cannot “remove barriers” for vaccine access for people “ineligible for the shot or in any other way that conflicts with FDA’s product labeling.” This includes vaccinating healthy children, which Glaser said would be “both unprecedented and illegal.”
He said:
“Congress gave exclusive authority to the FDA to regulate the drugging of otherwise ineligible groups. At most, New Mexico can ‘remove barriers’ within its own systems, such as clarifying that pharmacists may vaccinate eligible patients without individual prescriptions, or funding access programs for eligible patients.”
Nass said ACIP “decides which vaccines will be in the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program (VFC) — and this pays for vaccines for over 50% of American children.” She suggested this may have helped influence New Mexico’s order. She said:
“New Mexico has the greatest percentage of citizens on benefits programs of any state — so presumably a very high percentage of New Mexico kids get free vaccines through VFC. New Mexico may want to get as many kids vaccinated as possible before COVID-19 vaccines are removed from VFC.”
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I used to live in New Mexico, and their Department of Health cited in this post makes me want to bang my head against the wall. This is what happens when ignorance and partisan warfare mentality meet self righteousness. They're harming innocent children.
“If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that population growth by perhaps 10–15%.”