'That's not how the American people expect to be spoken to': Mike Pence tears into Biden's COVID speech and says Biden and Harris spent last year 'undermining confidence in the vaccine'

 Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday tore into the tone of President Joe Biden's COVID speech, while blaming the current president and vice president for some Americans' vaccine hesitancy.  

'I have to tell you the president's speech yesterday was unlike anything I've ever heard from an American president,' Pence said on Fox & Friends. 'I mean to have the president of the United States say that he's been patient but his patience is wearing thin. That's not how the American people expect to be spoken to by our elected leader.' 

During Biden's Thursday remarks, the president chided the unvaccinated for keeping the COVID-19 pandemic roaring. 

Pence suggested that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris would have an easier time convincing people to get vaccinated if they hadn't said negative things about former President Donald Trump's vaccine effort. 

'They spent the whole last year undermining public confidence in the vaccine,' Pence complained. 

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Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday tore into the tone of President Joe Biden's COVID speech during an appearance on Fox & Friends 

During the 2020 presidential campaign, both Biden and Harris expressed that they feared Trump would push for a hasty authorization of a COVID vaccine in order to gain a political upper hand. 

'If and when the vaccine comes, it's not likely to go through all the tests that need to be done, and the trials that are needed to be done,' Biden said last August. 

Harris said she'd only take the vaccine if Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other top American medical experts, approved of the process. 

'If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it,' she said at the vice presidential debate in October with Pence. 'Absolutely.' 

'But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I'm not taking it,' she added. 

Pence pointed to that comment in his interview with Fox & Friends to make his point. 

'If you remember my vice presidential debate, I called out Kamala Harris. I said you've got to stop playing politics with people's lives,' Pence said Friday. 'Because she said she wouldn't take a vaccine that President Trump had created.'

Pence also bemoaned that the Biden White House didn't give the previous administration more credit for Operation Warp Speed, the government's public-private push for swift COVID-19 vaccine development. 

'[T]hey've given scant credit to President Trump and our administration for this vaccine,' Pence said. 

The former vice president suggested Biden could get more vaccine skeptics on board by 'lead[ing] by example.' 

'Encourage people to take the vaccine, as Karen and I did on national television back in December,' Pence said. 

Biden, then the president-elect, also received his vaccine doses in public.  

Pence then took aim at Biden's new vaccine mandates - which cover the federal workforce and forces companies with more than 100 employees to require vaccines or weekly testing.

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During President Joe Biden's Thursday remarks, the president chided the unvaccinated for keeping the COVID-19 pandemic roaring

'But to say that it's not about freedom - it's exactly about freedom, America is about freedom and the ability to make the best decision for your family, for your business,' Pence said. 'And the approach this administration is taking now with this new surge of mandates and dictates from Washington, D.C. and also with not respecting the leadership at the state level - that was central to the approach of the White House coronavirus taskforce.'

Biden has publicly feuded with Republican governors like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is trying to bar school districts from implementing mask mandates.  

Pence suggested that if he and Trump were still in office, they would have left those decisions up to the states.  

'And now to have a president, not just scolding the American people but scolding governors around the country, it's just not the American way,' Pence said. 

'I expect the response they're going to get from across the country will prove that,' the former vice president added.  

Repubicans were generally outraged with the news that Biden was using an Occupational Safety and Health Administration emergency order to force companies to mandate that their employees are vaccinated - or face weekly testing. 

 'Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate completely ignores the science and is an attack on Americans’ right to privacy. The feds have NO AUTHORITY to force employers make their employees get vaccinated,' said Sen. Ted Cruz. 

DeSantis said Biden was 'forcing this and coercing people. 

'I'd imagine that you're gonna see a lot of activity in the courts if they try to do that through an executive action,' the Florida governor added.

The Republican National Committee said Thursday that it planned to sue the U.S. government over the order, with several House Republicans prepping legislation as well. With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, bills to negate Biden's action will go no where.

'Joe Biden told Americans when he was elected that he would not impose vaccine mandates. He lied,' said RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

McDaniel clarified that she was 'pro-vaccine,' just 'anti-mandate.'   

'Many small businesses and workers do not have the money or legal resources to fight Biden's unconstitutional actions and authoritarian decrees, but when his decree goes into effect, the RNC will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties,' McDaniel said.