OPINION | This article contains political commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
As President Biden prepared to take office, the country was on track to administer 100 million vaccines within his first several months. This had nothing to do with him or his plans. This was simply the pace at which Americans were already being vaccinated.
Nevertheless, Biden pledged to administer 100 million doses in his first 100 days. It really wasn’t impressive since we were already going to accomplish that. But at least it was a promise he could probably keep, even without accomplishing much of anything.
But on January 25, just after his inauguration, he upped his target and pledged 150 million Covid vaccinations in his first 100 days.
Specifically, he explained his hopes for daily vaccine administration and the ultimate 100 day number, saying,
“I think with the grace of God the goodwill of the neighbor and the creek not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 150 – 1.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day. But we have to meet that goal of 1 million a day, and everything points that we’re going to have a) enough vaccine b) enough syringes and all the paraphernalia needed to store, keep, inject move into your arm the vaccine. Three, a number of vaccinators people administering the vaccine, which is not an easy task of those who have those facilities like the nursing homes and hospitals.”
He continued on to say that his administration is “confident” that they can reach the 150 million number.
Obviously, the media was eager to report on the new goal because they thrive on anything Covid related and it fit their narrative of Biden “taking Covid seriously.”
Pres. Biden will update the nation on his administration’s plan for combating COVID-19, after stating that anyone who wants a vaccine should be able to get one by the Spring.
The president also raised the vaccination target from 100 million shots in 100 days to 150 million. pic.twitter.com/2z25Jjxl7L
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 26, 2021
But either he realized that he wasn’t going to make good on that goal, or he just plain old forgot that he said it, because he just tweeted this:
Before I took office, I set a big goal of administering 100 million shots in the first 100 days. With the progress we’re making I believe we’ll not only reach that, we’ll break it.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 16, 2021
It’s true that he set an essentially meaningless goal to administer 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days, which would be met even if he remained locked in his basement for those 100 days. So yeah, he’s technically on track to meet that goal.
But the frustrating thing is that he’s now acting like he never upped that goal to 150 million. Like he didn’t just move the goalpost. And he’s congratulating himself for being on track to keep his “promise” of 100 million. But. like I said, there’s no need for self-congratulation since we’re already going to hit 100 million shots in that time because that’s exactly the pace we’ve been going without President Biden in the equation at all.
Biden just tweeted that his goal is 100 million vaccines and congratulated himself for being on track, so you’ll probably want to stealth edit this article. https://t.co/R8YRXIDDma
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) February 16, 2021
You’ll notice that I included screenshots of the headlines above rather than links to the articles, just in case any of these publications might try to run cover for President Biden and go back to edit these stories to minimize the hilarity of him pretending like he’s only ever pledged 100 million.
So, the moral of this story is: Biden promises are meaningless and I can’t even trust the mainstream media not to retroactively edit their stories to cover for their beloved leader.