President lauds Operation Warp Speed success but says New York will have to wait for vaccine
Donald Trump broke his eight day silence with an update on Operation Warp Speed, the project to distribute a vaccine when it is approved by the Food & Drug Administration.
The Rose Garden briefing comes on the day that most networks finally called Georgia for Joe Biden and North Carolina for the president, putting the electoral college votes at 306 to 232 in favour of the Democrat.
In a slight verbal stumble, the president came close to acknowledging that the administration may be in its last days. No formal statement was made regarding the election result. He did not answer any questions.
Trump is being tipped to announce a fresh presidential run in 2024 as he continues to refuse to acknowledge his election defeat to Mr Biden, now president-elect and preparing for government as Mr Trump fires out conspiracy theories in angry tweets from the Oval Office.
The president has meanwhile been branded an “elixir of racial anxiety” by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in an advanced extract from the latter’s new memoir A Promised Land, reflecting on the toxic political undercurrent the former real estate mogul and reality TV star was able to capitalise on to win the White House in 2016.
Mr Obama has also made his first remarks on the current undemocratic impasse in Washington, telling Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes that the Republican Party is “humouring” the incumbent in his delusional rejection of the outcome and taking the country down “a dangerous path”.
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