Donald Trump said during the second and final presidential debate on October 22 that he was optimistic a vaccine would be ready ‘within weeks’. When moderator Kristen Welker asked if that was a ‘guarantee’, Trump replied that it was not, but that the US would have a vaccine by the ‘end of the year’.

It wasn’t the first time he had made this prediction publicly: ‘I think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of the year,’ Trump said back in May.

The media could have accepted that the President probably has better insight into the timeline of vaccine development and approval than those not involved in the process. Instead, they roundly mocked his prediction, declaring with the backing of so-called ‘experts’ that it would require a ‘miracle’ for the vaccine to be ready by 2021.