Last week, news arrived that President Trump had lurched into what may be his most reckless obsession yet: His administration would probably seek an “emergency use authorization” for a Covid-19 vaccine long before some scientists believe it would be safe to do so.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services immediately addressed the obvious suspicion: “Talk of an ‘October surprise’”— an attempt to manufacture good news just before the November election — “is a lurid Resistance fantasy.”
As he does often, however, the president proudly admitted to the exact thing his underling insisted was inconceivable.
“The deep state, or whoever, over at the F.D.A.,” he tweeted recently at Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, “is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after Nov. 3. Must focus on speed and saving lives!”
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