What did Donald Trump do today?

He said vaccine-makers were conspiring to cover up how good their vaccines are.

Today, Trump (or someone posting on his behalf) appeared to be trying to lay the groundwork to walk back some of the most extreme decisions made using his authority as President by his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy. In a post to his private microblogging service, Trump said this:

It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next "hunt" and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work. They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don't seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as "BRILLIANT" as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???  

There's a lot to unpack here. First, Trump appears to mean vaccines, not drugs—although he has, famously, gotten those two very different kinds of things confused in the past. 

There is no secret data that pharmaceutical companies are hiding from the public that show their vaccines work. That means that Trump is either lying or confused when he says he's being shown "GREAT numbers and results" that aren't being shared with the public or the CDC. In reality, every clinical trial of the COVID vaccines has shown results so striking that it's impossible to interpret them as anything other than dramatically increasing individuals' immunity to the virus. The answer Trump wants "NOW" has been available to him and everyone else since December of 2020:

Graph showing results of a large-scale clinical trial of the first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 31, 2020. The blue plots (trending sharply upward) show cumulative COVID infections in a group that received a placebo injection, and the red plots (almost flat) show cumulative cases in patients who received the actual vaccine.

Trump is correct that the CDC is in crisis. Most of its senior leadership has been fired by him, or quit in protest. In a scene straight out of the history of science in the Soviet Union, research scientists working for the CDC must submit their findings for political approval by Kennedy before they can be published. Trump has repeatedly tried to slash its budget, to the point that Congressional Republicans actually pushed back in his budget bill—after which he then simply withheld legitimately appropriated money anyway in order to force layoffs of public health workers.

 In August, a deranged man who believed in the same conspiracy theories about vaccines that Kennedy does fired 500 bullets into its headquarters, killing a police officer. When that happened, the Trump White House had virtually no reaction other than to criticize the agency again, making CDC employees worry that it would encourage more attacks.

Kennedy, who was calling himself a liberal as early as last year, is the HHS Secretary because of a political bargain he made to throw his support to Trump. It's never been entirely clear if Trump has ever managed to understand how much Kennedy hated "Operation Warp Speed," the push to find a COVID vaccine that is the one domestic program that actually succeeded on Trump's watch. 

If he did, it's not clear why Trump didn't simply force Kennedy to stop undermining that one accomplishment—except that this wouldn't be the first time in Trump's second term that he's seemed unable to muster the energy to rein in subordinates to whom he's delegated the authority of the presidency.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents are responsible for the people they appoint, and that's especially true when their appointees are especially incompetent. 

• Regardless of why Trump is apparently so confused, the health and safety of the American people requires a president who is not confused.