Every living former president has urged Americans to get vaccinated in a new ad series - apart from Trump, who's demanding credit for the vaccine
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Bill Bostock
Mar 11, 2021, 19:53 IST
President Barack Obama seen in an Ad Council public service announcement released March 11, 2021.YouTube/Ad Council
Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter appeared in a vaccine PSA released early Thursday.
Trump didn't take part in the campaign, though it's unclear if he was asked.
Trump did issue a statement saying "I hope everyone remembers" the vaccine wouldn't exist without him.
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Every living former US president has appeared in an ad campaign telling Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, apart from Donald Trump, who has instead released a statement demanding credit for the vaccine.
On Thursday, the nonprofit Ad Council released a public service advertisement starring Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.
"This vaccine means hope," Obama said in the video. "It will protect you and those you love from this dangerous and deadly disease."
Trump was conspicuously absent, though it's unclear if he was asked to join the campaign.
Hours before the campaign went live, Trump's personal office in Florida released a statement in which he claimed responsibility for the vaccines' existence.
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"I hope everyone remembers when they're getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) vaccine, that if I wasn't president, you wouldn't be getting that beautiful 'shot' for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn't be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!" Trump said, using a derogatory term for the novel coronavirus, which was first found in China.
Asked by Insider whether it had asked Trump to join the PSA, an Ad Council said the project with the presidents started in December. The spokesperson did not say whether the Ad Council had approached Trump, who at the time was an outgoing president.
Members of the Biden administration have said that they inherited no coronavirus-vaccine-distribution plan from Trump White House, with a person telling CNN they had to "build everything from scratch."
Days before Biden's inauguration, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted that Operation Warp Speed would continue in the Biden administration, but that there was an "urgent need to address the failures of the Trump team approach to vaccine distribution."
Biden called the vaccine rollout under Trump "a dismal failure."
Meanwhile, states including Texas and Mississippi have abandoned mandatory mask wearing. But Biden said the move was premature and an example of "Neanderthal thinking."
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