Joe Biden says he’s sick of “the former guy” — Donald Trump — making headlines, and instead wants the American people to be front and center. Biden brushed off questions about former President Trump twice during a CNN town hall meeting in Milwaukee, Wis. on Feb. 16, 2021.
He told CNN moderator Anderson Cooper he was simply “tired of talking” about his predecessor, per People. The president said, “Look for four years all that’s been in the news is Trump. The next four years I want to make sure all the news is the American people. I’m tired of talking about Trump.”
Biden avoided making comments on Trump’s second impeachment trial after Nancy Pelosi slammed the U.S. Justice Department for being “cowards” and not convicting him. Biden neutrally said he “wasn’t going to call names out” and that “their prosecutorial decisions will be left to the Justice Department, not me,” per Daily Mail.
While steering clear of name-calling, Biden did let slip he had spoken to most of the former living presidents — bar one. “All of them, with one exception, picked up the phone and called me as well,” he said, per People.
But aside from the president throwing in some brief commentary about Trump, he did offer some words of hope about the pandemic.
During Joe Biden’s 75-minute town hall meeting, it was clear he wanted to spread more good news as opposed to bad. Following Donald Trump’s slow vaccine roll-out during his term (via NBC News), the president reaffirmed things had moved along after pledging a $1.9 trillion plan to aid American health and the economy, per Deadline.
Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he had recently secured coronavirus vaccine contracts from Moderna and Pfizer, which would see an extra 100 million doses by late July — a month earlier than expected, according to People. “What’s going to happen is it’s going to continue to increase as we move along. We will have reached 400 million doses by the end of May and 600 million by the end of July,” he said, per CNN.
With this in mind, Biden said if people keep wearing masks, social distancing, washing their hands, and getting vaccinated, Americans could expect a normal Christmas this year. He explained, “It’s a high probability that the vaccinations that are available today — and the new one, Johnson & Johnson, God willing will prove to be useful…
By next Christmas I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance, God willing, than we are today.” At the time of writing, more than 487,000 people in the U.S. have died due to COVID, according to The New York Times.