During an interview on “The Carlos Watson Show”, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla revealed that former President Donald Trump would call to encourage him to get the vaccine out quickly before last year’s election because the coronavirus vaccine could help his chances.
“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,” Bourla said in the interview set to run Friday, but emphasized that “he never pressed me to do something that would be inappropriate with a vaccine.”
The head of Pfizer, whose vaccine against COVID-19 became the first approved for use in the U.S. in December, said that he made it clear to both Trump and now-President Biden’s campaign that the development would “move with the speed of science.”
“The important thing for me was the pressure of the billions of people that suddenly had invested their entire hopes on us, and we had to deliver,” Bourla said.
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Bourla added that he is not entirely happy with how the vaccine rollout was conducted, though he said the problems were because the process was “very complicated.”
Watch the video below.
