Former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow is caught on Fox News hot mic repeatedly calling 'bulls**t' on Kamala Harris' claims the Biden administration had to 'start from scratch' on federal vaccine distribution strategy
Former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow was caught on a Fox News hot mic Tuesday calling ‘bulls**t’ on comments made by Vice President Kamala Harris about the former administration’s vaccine distribution efforts.
Kudlow joined Sandra Smith and John Roberts on 'America Reports' earlier this afternoon to plug the launch of his new weekday show on Fox Business, which debuted today at 4pm.
At the close of the segment, Smith aired footage from an Axios interview with Harris, in which the vice president claimed the Biden administration had to ‘start from scratch’ with their federal vaccine strategy.
‘There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations,’ Harris says in the clip. ‘We were leaving it to the states and the local leaders to try and figure it out. In many ways, we are starting from scratch on something that has been raging for almost an entire year.’
While Smith claimed Harris was making ‘false claims’ about Trump’s vaccine roll-out, Kudlow, who was no longer visible on screen but still mic’ed up, could be heard shouting ‘bulls**t! bulls**t! bulls**t!’ in the background.
Kudlow joined Sandra Smith and John Roberts on 'America Reports' earlier this afternoon to plug the launch of his new weekday show on Fox Business, which debuted today at 4pm
At that point, the producers of the show attempted to cut the audio, but Kudlow could be heard continuing to carry on in the background.
Smith then reacted to Kudlow’s profanity-laced protest, telling her viewers: ‘that is Larry Kudlow weighing in…Wow.’
Seemingly unabashed by his broadcasting faux pas, Kudlow - who repeatedly downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic during his service to Trump - later doubled down on his comments.
During his Fox Business debut later Tuesday, Kudlow said: ‘Earlier on Fox News Channel, I made some comments about that clip, you might have read about it, if not you could Google it.’
‘I may have said a bad word,’ he continued. ‘I’m not usually a guy who swears but what the Vice President said burned me up and it’s simply not true, okay? It is somewhere between cognitive dissonance and an outright falsehood lie.’
Conceding that while ‘not everything went perfectly’ with the Trump administration’s vaccine roll-out, Kudlow, a member of the COVID-19 task force, still called Operation Warp Speed a ‘triumph’ and took partial credit for is apparent successes.
'I did use cuss words and I apologize and I won’t do that again,' Kudlow added.
‘There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations,’ Harris says in the clip. ‘We were leaving it to the states and the local leaders to try and figure it out. In many ways, we are starting from scratch on something that has been raging for almost an entire year'
Seemingly unabashed by his broadcasting faux pas, Kudlow, who repeatedly downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic during his service to Trump, later doubled down on his comments
Others, like Kudlow, have also come forward to criticize Harris’ claims about having to ‘start from scratch’.
Among them was former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah, who tweeted: ‘Larry Kudlow isn't wrong. It's insulting that Biden/Harris keep echoing this false claim.
‘They inherited a vaccine plan that was doing more than 1.1 MILLION vaccines a day when they entered office. They should be thanking the Trump Administration.’
Others have said that Harris’ comments come as a direct contradiction to sentiments made by infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who, during a press briefing on January 21, said: ‘we’re certainly not starting from scratch’.
In an interview with CNN this week, however, Fauci appeared to defend Harris’ remarks by insisting that she was speaking about the ‘vague’ plan for administering vaccines to people.
‘What the vice president was referring to is “what is the process of actually getting these doses into people?”’ Fauci said. ‘That’s something that we had to get much better organized, now with getting the community vaccine centers, getting the pharmacies involved, getting mobile units involved, so that’s what I believe she was referring to.’
Kudlow, shown left, is the ex-director of Donald Trump’s National Economic Council
Somewhat ironically, at the beginning of his debut broadcast Tuesday, Kudlow promised to practice ‘civility’ on his show, in the months ahead.
‘Welcome folks, the debut of Kudlow, I’m Larry Kudlow, I’m delighted and most grateful to be here with you,’ he began.
‘Sometimes on this show, we’re going to have some disagreement, and that’s okay. And I promise it will all be done with fact-based civility and respect. So with all that, let’s begin out journey together.’
Also Tuesday, President Biden pledged to break 100 million COVID vaccine shots in 100 days after he was criticized for setting a low ball target.
'Before I took office, I set a big goal of administering 100 million shots in the first 100 days. With the progress we're making I believe we'll not only reach that, we'll break it,' Biden wrote on Twitter.
Biden has longed talked about 100 million shots in the arm in his first 100 days as president.
But some experts have called his goal conservative and point out that the effective target of one million doses a day had been met before Biden was even in office. Trump aides were angry that they were not credited for reaching the one million daily inoculations.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who serves as chief medical adviser to the president, has predicted that any American who wants the vaccine will have access to it by spring.
'By the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, 'open season,' Fauci said last week on NBC's 'Today Show.' 'Namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated.'
But Fauci walked that back Tuesday, telling CNN that it would be Late May or early June.
No comments