AP Photo/Evan Vucci
- Pfizer's CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said Trump believed a vaccine would boost his reelection chances.
- Still, Trump "never pressured me to do anything inappropriate with the vaccine," he said.
- Trump previously accused Pfizer of withholding its trial results until after the election.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Pfizer's Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said that President Donald Trump made it clear that he thought a successful COVID-19 vaccine would help his reelection chances.
In an interview with the Carlos Watson Show on Ozy, first reported by The Hill, Bourla said that while Trump never inappropriately pushed him on the vaccine, it was clearly top of mind for the president approaching the November 3 election.
"The president was calling me and he was making very clear that he would like to see it sooner rather than later, but he never pressured me to do anything inappropriate with the vaccine," Bourla said.
As the election drew near, Bourla said, "A few times he was telling me that we need to do it fast. First he would say, we need to do it quickly, people are dying, and then also, he would add we have also the election, but people is the important thing."
"It was also very clear to him and also the campaign of the current president that no matter what, we will move with the speed of science. Some people wanted to move faster, some people wanted to move slower, because for them, elections were an important milestone. For me, it was nonexistent," Bourla added.
Trump had previously accused Pfizer and Moderna of conspiring against him but not announcing their full trial results after the 2020 election. And in statements issued through his post-presidential office, he has taken credit for the development of the vaccines through Operation Warp Speed.
"As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn't have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!," Trump tweeted from his now-suspended Twitter account on November 9, 2020.
"I wanted to do it quickly. If I could do it a week earlier or two weeks earlier or three weeks earlier, I would. The important thing for me was the pressure of the billions of people that suddenly had invested their entire hopes on us, and we had to deliver," Bourla said.
On December 11, Trump directed some of his ire at the Food and Drug Administration, tweeting, "while my pushing the money drenched but heavily bureaucratic @US_FDA saved five years in the approval of NUMEROUS great new vaccines, it is still a big, old, slow turtle. Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA. Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!"
Pfizer's vaccine was granted emergency-use authorization by the FDA the next day.
Despite taking credit for the vaccine in public, Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump were reportedly vaccinated in secret at the White House in January before Trump left office.
Bourla also said in the interview that he's been dismayed by the pace of the vaccine rollout worldwide.
"I was not happy with the speed, but as all Americans and all citizens of the world, it happened not because everybody was incompetent, but because it's very complicated," he said.