President Biden and former President Trump’s tense Thursday night match-up was the first debate since 1960 to not feature a live audience.

CNN CEO Mark Thompson told Axios earlier this week that he was aiming for ‘an absolutely classic debate,’ similar to the first-ever televised debate between former Presidents Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. 

It was one of several details that spurred comparisons online between the CNN Presidential Debate and the historically significant first debate between Kennedy and Nixon.

Political commentator S.E. Cupp wrote on X, ‘Maybe the most consequential debate since Nixon/Kennedy?’

Nixon, who had just spent the better part of a decade as vice president in the Eisenhower administration, had led then-young Sen. John F. Kennedy in most national polls ahead of the event, according to the National Constitution Center.

However, Kennedy’s team took a more media-savvy approach, accepting an invitation for a media walkthrough before the event and opting for wearing makeup for the cameras, according to reports.

Nixon, feeling the toll of both the intense campaign trail and a recent hospital stay, appeared tired and unhealthy. 

It was widely reported that people who watched the debate on television thought Kennedy won, and people who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won. Kennedy went on to win the election by a narrow margin.

RealClearPolitics elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich made the comparison to Thursday’s debate on X.

‘The modern version of the Nixon-Kennedy debate: People who only read the transcript will think Biden won, people who watch or listen will think Trump won,’ he wrote.

Others also compared Biden to Nixon after the 81-year-old president appeared tired and sometimes unfocused while sparring with his rival on screen.

Former Trump 2020 campaign aide Tim Murtaugh wrote on X, ‘It’s funny. They say that people who listened to Kennedy and Nixon debate on the radio thought Nixon won because he spoke well and made good arguments. But people who watched on TV thought Kennedy won because he looked better.’

‘Biden lost both groups tonight,’ he added.

Heated exchanges ensued between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden during the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday night, as the two rivals went head-to-head during their second debate since 2020. 

Illegal immigration, abortion, and inflation were among the top issues on the debate stage, as well as climate change and the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars.

The debate comes as Biden and Trump are the frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican parties respectively. This is the first televised debate between the candidates for this election cycle and a second hosted by ABC is scheduled to be held in September. 

Trump did not participate in the Republican primary debates, while the Democratic National Convention (DNC) threw its full support behind Biden and did not hold any debates among his challengers.

Here are the top clashes from Thursday’s debate:

1. ‘I really don’t know what he said,’ Trump-Biden immigration clash

When CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked President Joe Biden to inform voters why he can curb the record-high numbers of illegal migrants crossing the border during Thursday night’s debate, Biden and Trump sparred over their immigration policies, which ended in Biden calling Trump a ‘liar’ and Trump appearing to not understand a portion of Biden’s responses.

After touting Congress’s bipartisan border package that lawmakers bucked earlier this year, Biden said ‘we find ourselves in a situation where when he was president, he was separating babies from their mothers put them in cages, making sure that the families were separated.’

‘That’s not the right way to go. What I’ve done since I’ve changed the law, what’s happened? I’ve changed it in a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally, that’s better than when he left office. And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,’ Biden said.

But Trump, appearing to not understand Biden, responded: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows what he said either.’

‘Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country,’ Trump continued. ‘All he had to do was leave it, all he had to do was to leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country, to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists – we have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now.’

2. ‘Alley cat morals,’ Trump-Biden clash over Stormy Daniels allegations

Biden accused former President Trump of ‘having sex with a porn star’ and said he has ‘the morals of an alley cat,’ but the presumptive Republican nominee maintained that he did not, and accused Biden of being behind his legal cases because ‘he can’t win fair and square.’ 

‘How many billions of dollars do you owe civil penalties for molesting a woman in public? For doing a whole range of things—having sex with a porn star…while your wife was pregnant?’ Biden said. ‘You have the morals of an alley cat during the night, sir.’ 

Trump fired back denying the allegations.

‘I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one,’ he said. ‘Number two, that was a case that was started, and they moved a high-ranking official—DOJ—into the Manhattan DA’s office to start the case.’ 

Trump was referring to Matthew Colangelo, who served as a senior DOJ official in the Biden administration, and left to join Bragg’s prosecution team. 

3. ‘I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelenskyy as President-Elect before I take office,’ Trump-Biden spar over Ukraine-Russia war

Trump threw several jabs at Biden for giving billions of dollars to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to continue its defense against the Russian invasion that began in February 2022 and said if elected, he’d have the war ‘settled’ before taking office.

‘He’s given $200 billion, that’s a lot of money,’ Trump said. ‘I don’t think there’s ever been anything like it. Every time that Zelenskyy comes to this country. He walks away with $60 billion. He’s the greatest salesman ever.’

‘The money that we’re spending on this war, we shouldn’t be spending. It should have never happened. I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelenskyy as President-Elect before I take office on January 20. I’ll have that war settled. People being killed so needlessly, so stupidly and I will get it settled, and I’ll get it settle fast before I take office.’

In response, the current president said, ‘The fact is that Putin is a war criminal.’

‘He’s killed thousands and thousands of people and he has made one thing clear, he wants to reestablish what was part of the Soviet empire, not just a piece, he wants all of Ukraine,’ he said.

‘By the way, all that money we give Ukraine from weapons we make here in the United States, give them the weapons, not the money at this point, and I made our NATO allies produce as much funding for Ukraine as we have – that’s why it’s that’s why we’re strong,’ he said. 

4. Trump-Biden spar over cognitive abilities, golf handicaps: ‘You are a child’

During the CNN Presidential Debate, CNN moderator Dana Bash presented the age Biden and Trump would be at the end of a potential second term.

Biden would be 86. Trump would be 82. 

Biden defended his age, saying he ‘spent half my career being criticized about being the youngest person in politics. I was the second-youngest person ever elected to the United States Senate, and now I’m the oldest. This guy is three years younger and a lot less competent.’ 

But Trump reminded that he has taken two cognitive tests. 

‘I aced both of them, as you know, we made it public. He took none. I’d like to see him take one. Just want a real easy one,’ Trump said. 

Trump, an avid golfer, said Thursday night that he recently ‘won two club championships—not even senior—two regular club championships.’ 

‘To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way and I do it,’ Trump said. ‘He doesn’t do it. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match—he can’t hit a ball 50 yards.’ 

‘I’ve seen you swing. I know your swing,’ Trump fired back. ‘Let’s not act like children.’ 

But Biden replied: ‘You are a child.’ 

5. Biden-Trump exchange jabs over criminal records

While Biden reminded Trump that the ‘only person’ that has a felony record on the debate stage is Trump, the former president said ‘when he talks about a convicted felon, his son is a convicted felon.’

‘At a very high level, his son is convicted,’ Trump said, adding that he’d seek ‘retribution,’ referring to a potential November election victory. 

‘As soon as he gets out of office, Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done,’ he continued. ‘He’s done horrible things, all of the death caused at the border, telling the Ukrainian people that we’re gonna want a billion dollars if you change the prosecutor, otherwise, you’re not getting a billion dollars. If i ever said that, that’s quid pro quo.’

‘This man is a criminal. This man, you’re lucky, you’re lucky. I did nothing wrong. We have a system that was rigged and disgusting,’ Trump said.

Meanwhile, Biden pushed back at the idea that he has done any wrongdoing ‘is outrageous.’

‘It’s simply a lie,’ Biden responded. ‘Number two, the idea that you have a right to seek retribution against any American just because you’re president is wrong. No president has ever spoken like that before. No president in our history has spoken like that before.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

President Joe Biden was praised by his wife on Thursday following his first presidential debate appearance despite a widely-criticized performance.

First Lady Jill Biden greeted her husband on stage at the debate after-party with a live audience, seeming to celebrate the mere fact that the president responded to moderators’ questions. 

‘Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question, you knew all the facts!’ Jill Biden cheered to a smiling Joe Biden on-stage.

‘And let me ask the crowd. ‘What did Trump do?’ the first lady continued, turning to the audience and gesturing before shouting ‘Lie!’

The moment has gone viral since the debate, with many articles reporting on Jill Biden’s manner of speaking being reminiscent of praising a child.

Biden’s performance at the debate has been almost universally panned by commentators due to his inarticulate speaking and unstable demeanor.

Repeated stammering, long periods of silence and facial expressions that conveyed intense confusion have convinced some of Biden’s loudest cheerleaders that the president must step down from the re-election campaign.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime Biden ally, wrote the debate ‘made me weep’ and realize Biden should step aside.

‘I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,’ he wrote.

CNN commentator Van Jones, who cried for joy when Biden won the 2020 presidential election, offered an emotional plea for the president to step aside.

‘I love that guy as a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight, to restore confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that,’ Jones said. ‘And I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now.’

Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

Some members of the Fox News Digital focus group had a change of heart on how they planned to vote after watching the debate.

‘Cognitive ability … this is the highest office, and for me, it’s very important that I trust the executive to understand and be cognitively competent,’ one member of the focus group, who changed their support from President Biden to former President Donald after the debate, said of their reasoning.

The comments come after the first debate between Biden and Trump, who will square off in a rematch of the 2020 election.

Biden, who has faced growing questions about his fitness to continue serving in the nation’s highest office, looked to dispel any notion that he lacked the physical and mental capacity for four more years as president. However, many critics point out that his performance only did more to deepen those fears among voters.

‘From the very first moment, Biden looked old, hard to understand, confused, saying scary things, and just throwing mud,’ Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow said shortly after the debate.

‘I’ve lived four years with Trump, I lived three and a half years with [Biden]. I’ll take the other four.’

Those observations were shared by the Fox News Digital focus group, with one member saying that one only had to play back video of the debate to see why the night solidified his support for Trump.

‘I’ve lived four years with Trump, I lived three and a half years with [Biden],’ the member said. ‘I’ll take the other four.’

Overall, 10 of the 15 members of the group said they were supporting Trump after the debate.

Asked whether any moments for Biden stuck out, some respondents praised the president for his positions on taxes and childcare. Nevertheless, the group expressed concern overall when it comes to Biden’s ability to lead the country.

‘I don’t think anyone is going to remember anything he said tonight,’ one member said. ‘They’re going to remember how he said it.’

For its part, the Biden campaign insists the debate was a net negative for Trump and helped make the case for the president.

‘Based on research we conducted during tonight’s debate, it is clear that the more voters heard from Donald Trump, the more they remembered why they dislike him. Meanwhile, President Biden started slow but finished strong,’ a Biden campaign official told Fox News Digital in an email early Friday morning. 

The Biden campaign referred to a ‘survey of undecided voters in a Midwest state’ where ‘debate-watchers agreed that President Biden won the debate and the more they saw of Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive behavior, the more they remembered why they voted against him in 2020.’

‘Over the course of the night, Trump continued to double down on unpopular policy positions and petty and vindictive personal anecdotes, while refusing to address the issues that undecided voters actually care about,’ the official added.

Not a single voter who participated in a Fox News Digital focus group said they felt better about President Biden after watching his performance at the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday.

Democrats, independents and Republicans who gave their real-time reaction to the debate said that former President Trump appeared stronger than Biden when it came to effective communication and the ability to appear like a leader.

‘He got off to a horrible start,’ a male voter told focus group leader Lee Carter, president of Maslansky and Partners. ‘At the beginning he couldn’t even put a sentence together at the opening statement.’ 

One woman expressed disappointment in the debate, noting that Biden and Trump spent more time attacking each other’s records than discussing the problems facing the country.

‘I think they’re just battling each other, like, head on and not addressing the real problems. Like, they’re just trying to be on top of each other. It just felt like, I don’t know, a fist fight to me,’ she said. 

A man who said he was ‘okay’ with Biden’s performance suggested the president would have been helped if his microphone was closer to his mouth. Biden’s voice appeared raspy during the debate and at times he did not project at the level of his opponent, Trump.

But another woman interjected, saying that Biden, as an executive, should be able to project and communicate his points.  

‘Given that he was one of the earliest, as you mentioned, senators and has been in politics for decades, I don’t think that is an excuse,’ she said. 

Another male voter compared the physical presence of the two candidates and said Trump had an edge over the 81-year-old Biden. 

‘Okay, you just take Trump versus Biden on the physical and the ability to communicate: Trump is 78 years old also, but he is communicating as if he was 55 years old, and he’s getting his points across, and he’s acting like a leader,’ a male voter said.

At the onset of the discussion, about half of the focus group indicated they had concerns about Trump going into the debate. Voters said they were worried he would not act presidential, or that he would be too ‘aggressive’ in going after Biden. 

More than half of the focus group later said Trump exceeded their expectations. Several said the debate format, in which a candidate’s microphone was muted when it wasn’t their turn to speak, ultimately helped Trump maintain composure and control.

‘I think they meant to help Biden but they ended up helping Trump,’ one voter said. 

‘Because they shut him up.’ 

Former President Trump blasted President Biden in CNN’s presidential debate on Thursday for not firing any of the generals who oversaw the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. soldiers dead. 

‘He was so bad with Afghanistan,’ Trump said during the CNN presidential debate on Thursday night. ‘It was such a horrible embarrassment. Most embarrassing moment in the history of our country that when Putin watched that and he saw the incompetence.’

‘He should have fired those generals like I fired the one that you mentioned and so he’s got no love lost but he should have fired those generals,’ Trump continued. ‘No general got fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, Afghanistan, where we left billions of dollars of equipment behind. We lost 13 beautiful soldiers and 38 soldiers were obliterated.’

Trump went on to say that the world is ‘blowing up’ under President Biden.

‘You ever heard so much malarkey in my whole life?’ Biden responded.

Biden went on to defend his pullout of Afghanistan and blasted Trump for his positions on the war in Ukraine and comments made about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

‘This guy hasn’t fired anybody,’ Trump said at another point in the debate.

‘He should have fired every military man that was involved with the Afghan horror show,’ Trump said. ‘The most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. He didn’t fire. Did you fire anybody? Did you fire anybody that’s on the border? That’s allowed us to have the worst border in the history of the world. Did anybody get fired for allowing 18 million people, many from prisons, many from mental institutions?’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

A letter signed by 16 top economists warning of the economic dangers of electing former President Trump, which is being amplified by the Biden campaign and other Biden surrogates, is littered with signatories who have either donated to Biden or supported him politically in the past.

‘While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump,’ the economists wrote in a letter first reported on by Axios this week that has been promoted by various members of the Biden campaign on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

The letter’s Nobel Prize-winning signatories show political donations to President Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns. The signatories also donated tens of thousands of dollars to other Democrat candidates and signed previous letters supporting Biden’s agenda, including attacking ‘selfish and reckless’ Trump, a Fox News Digital review found.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University professor who reportedly spearheaded the letter, previously signed a letter supporting Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and donated $1,250 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020. 

Between 2004 and 2020, Stiglitz donated over $90,000 to Democrat candidates, FEC records show.

Georgetown University Professor George A. Akerlof, who is married to Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and maxed out as a donor in 2020, giving the campaign $5,600.

Akerlof, who donated nearly $90,000 to Democrats between the 1990s and 2022, also signed a letter supporting Build Back Better, and signed a letter in 2020 calling Trump’s re-election effort ‘selfish and reckless.’

Harvard University economist and historian Claudia Goldin donated $500 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and 2024 and has donated over $8,000 to Democrats in recent years. Goldin also signed a 2020 letter endorsing the Biden campaign. 

Economist and mathematician Eric Maskin signed a 2020 letter expressing support for the Biden campaign’s agenda and donated $3,000 to Democrats in recent years, including Senate candidates Raphael Warnock, Beto O’Rourke and Jon Ossoff. 

When reached for comment on his background supporting Biden and Democrats, Maskin said, ‘Although I am a registered Democrat and have donated money to Democratic candidates on occasion, I have also voted for many Republicans over the years (including Bill Weld and Charlie Baker for governor of Massachusetts)’ in a statement to Fox News Digital.

He added that he considers himself to ‘be more a centrist than a strong partisan in either ideological direction’ and pointed to an op-ed he recently wrote against political polarization in favor of a Republican senator and ‘supported the 2020 Biden agenda on its economic merits and signed the recent letter for the same reasons.’

Paul Milgrom, an economist at Stanford University, also previously signed letters supporting Build Back Better and calling Trump’s 2020 campaign ‘selfish and reckless.’

Daniel McFadden, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, donated at least $4,500 to Democrats in 2020. He also signed onto a letter saying Biden’s Build Back Better plan will ‘ease’ inflation. He was also part of another letter endorsing Biden in 2020.

Roger Myerson, an economist at the University of Chicago, donated $2,350 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and $250 in 2024 on top of donating over $40,000 to Democrats between 2004 and 2024.

Myerson also previously signed a letter backing Build Back Better and Biden’s economic recovery agenda. The University of Chicago economist took to X after the letter was published, posting, ‘A dictator from day 1 would be bad for America, and we should testify to that fact as patriotic Americans.’

‘As economists we can testify that his policies would not help against inflation either,’ he added.

Economist Edmund S. Phelps wrote an article in 2020 called ‘The Economic Case for Biden’ and also said that everything Trump has stood for in the past has been a ‘disaster.’

Phelps has also donated to Democrats in the past, including a $1,500 donation to a Democratic House candidate and $25 to Pete Buttigieg.

Paul Romer, an economist at Boston College, has previously described the Trump years as ‘miserable’ and publicly supported his impeachment. Romer endorsed Biden in a 2020 letter, praised Biden’s pandemic plan, and signed a letter in support of Build Back Better.

Stanford University economist Alvin Roth also signed multiple letters opposing Trump and supported the letter that referred to him as ‘selfish and reckless’ on top of donating $1,250 to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

Nobel Prize-winning economist William Sharpe donated $500 to the Biden campaign and $500 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020. Sharpe also signed a letter to business leaders in 2020 arguing that it was time to speak out against Trump and the ‘threat’ he ‘poses to the Republic.’

Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist, donated $1,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020 and over $20,000 to Democrats in total in recent years. In 2019, Shiller said he would support any candidate over Trump.

Princeton University economist Christopher Sims donated $500 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020 and over $9,000 to various Democrats. 

Two British economists on the list, Sir Oliver Hart and Sir Angus Deaton, signed a letter in support of Build Back Better. Hart endorsed Biden in 2020 and also signed the 2020 letter calling Trump ‘selfish and reckless.’

Several Biden campaign officials pounced on the story Tuesday morning to amplify the Axios report, including the Biden campaign’s rapid response adviser, James Singer, and campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates and other Biden surrogates also shared the report and quoted from it, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Tim Murtaugh, who served as Trump’s 2020 campaign spokesman, mocked the report on social media Tuesday, saying, ‘How amazing that this happens just in time for Biden to reference it in the upcoming debate (it’s a good bet that he does).’

‘It’s almost as much of a stroke of luck as the letter from 51 intelligence officers claiming that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation,’ Murtaugh continued. ‘Amazing.’

Axios did not note the previous political activism of the economists in the story nor did it note that one of the top signatories is married to Yellen.

Axios did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign and all 16 economists for comment.

A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday addressing the ‘politicization’ of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the pandemic exposed how the Biden administration allegedly pressured medical professionals to expedite the COVID-19 vaccine for children before enough testing was completed to confirm or deny its safety. 

At the onset of the subcommittee hearing, ‘Follow the Science?: Oversight of the Biden COVID-19 Administrative State Response,’ Chairman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., read from past testimony of Dr. Marion Gruber, the former director of the FDA’s vaccine office, regarding conversations she had with Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine in children. Massie said Gruber expressed a need for more trial testing in the pediatric population, specifically among males ages 12 to 17, but Marks allegedly pushed to further compress the schedule to license the vaccines so they could be mandated.

‘Right when they were getting the warnings that myocarditis and pericarditis are real and serious side effects to the vaccine, the top scientists at FDA had already agreed to compress the schedule as much as possible, right when they got the message that there were serious side effects,’ Massie said. ‘And Peter Marks, instead of telling them, ‘We’re going to give you more time to study this,’ he told them to compress the schedule even more.

‘And when they said that compressing the schedule was not possible, he fired them. He took them off the job, he assigned them to other duties. The top vaccine officials who had been there for 30 years, taken off the job because they wanted more time to study the effects of the vaccines. And they were told they needed to do this quickly because they needed to be mandated.

‘The Biden administration was mandating the vaccine on the military and young people going to school despite a lack of testing and data, despite growing reports of vaccine injuries. This kind of decision made by the administrative state is concerning. The FDA should not have approved a vaccine for children, EOA or otherwise, without proper testing. Injury from COVID vaccination is real.’ 

During a separate line of questioning, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked the witnesses, ‘Would you agree that the biggest reason for vaccine hesitancy is because of what the United States government told us about COVID and about the vaccine itself?’ 

‘I agree,’ Dr. Jordan Vaughn, an internist at a private practice in Birmingham, Alabama, said. ‘They were told one thing and, fairly, most people, once the opposite happens, usually start to question whoever told them that.’ 

‘The cause of vaccine hesitancy, the reason this got so political, in my judgment, is because our government told us time and time again things that were not accurate,’ Jordan said. 

Vaughn testified earlier in the hearing that, since 2022, he has treated more than 2,000 ‘unique patients’ with complications from the COVID-19 vaccination, including more than 30 service members.

He provided six specific examples of otherwise healthy members of the military who, upon receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and mandated booster shots, were suddenly hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, chest pain or shortness or breath. Some needed emergency surgery to remove a pancreas, some became too weak to walk or were eventually discharged after being deemed no longer physically fit enough to serve. In one case, one man had a cardiac arrest and died on his bathroom floor.

‘Especially in those with vaccine injury, their faith in medicine and public health is shattered. Many of those patients were holdouts from getting vaccinated because they either knew their own immune systems’ sensitivities or already had a prior infection of COVID-19,’ Vaughn said in his opening statement. 

‘However, it was under the August 2021 military service member, federal employee and OSHA mandate these individuals faced a decision to either vaccinate against their conscience and common sense or lose a career and gainful employment. Disabled from the adverse effects of these mandated injections, the profession they once held dear is an afterthought to just hoping for a diagnosis and possible treatment. Among the most egregious is our service members needlessly harmed through the mandate.

‘Knowing the emerging data in the spring of 2021 around the hearts of young athletic individuals and myocarditis from the mod mRNA COVID-19 injections,’ Vaughn said, ‘the FDA and the Biden administration sought to speed up approval and mandate it to the military in the name of military preparedness.’ 

Later, Jordan told Vaughn, ‘Tell me about that relationship, and how politics played into the relationship that’s supposed to exist between the doctor and their patient.’ 

‘I think the biggest trust was lost when they were mandated to get something against their conscience, and I think that is one of the things that needs to be — especially when you talk about a physician who knows his patient — there are certain patients that don’t need to have their immune system, in a sense, poked,’ said Vaughn, also the founder of the Microvascular Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to finding treatments for vaccine injury and long COVID. 

‘That knowledge is what a physician and their patient have and the relationship that exists. It is not something that is found in a parking lot when you roll down your window.’ 

Among the witnesses was Aaron Siri, a vaccine litigation expert handling lawsuits over COVID-19 vaccine injury. 

He told Jordan ‘billions of dollars were on the line for these pharmaceutical companies, and that really affected the way that these vaccines were rolled out. That’s a financial conflict of interest, especially when they didn’t have to pay for any injuries, and they knew it beforehand because the federal government contractually agreed that immunity applied to every single vaccine that was rolled out.’ 

Along with Gruber, his former boss, Dr. Philip Krause, former Deputy Director, FDA Office of Vaccines Research & Review, testified before the hearing Wednesday that he quit the FDA after 30 years of employment in various roles within the agency in protest over political pressure from the Biden administration to authorize vaccine boosters in young people in 2021.

‘The rapid move to mandates, which was foreshadowed by other Biden administration comments, suggested that the rapid review of the vaccine was motivated more by a desire to mandate vaccine than by other public health considerations,’ Krause said in his opening statement. 

‘It would be unrealistic to assume that politicians would have no interest in vaccine policy in the middle of a pandemic,’ he added. ‘Of course, they might hope to influence decision-making in a way that might increase their political capital. But every time this happens, there is collateral damage to trust. Now, if politicians were to own their decisions and state that they were responsible for them, that would at least be transparent and wouldn’t affect the trust in the public health agencies. 

‘But if politically appointed and Senate-confirmed agency heads announce these decisions as though they were the result of the normal processes, it becomes almost impossible for the public or for physicians to figure out which decisions are public health based and which are politically motivated.’