Donald Trump wishes he could tout his fast tracking development of the COVID-19 vaccine – but knows it's a losing topic with his base. The president has recently boasted the success of his speedy COVID vaccine behind closed doors with donors, the Wall Street Journal reports. But he rarely touts the controversial accomplishment publicly since putting vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Earlier this month, Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in contracts for new vaccine development. And he has previously pulled back recommendations around the COVID-19 vaccines and fired the panel supporting vaccines. But Trump told donors at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month that he thinks Operation Warp Speed, the project to fast-track access to the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, was one of the biggest accomplishments of his first term. He reportedly said that he wants to be able to bask more in his role in the vaccine's development. Guests at Trump's Bedminster dinner paid $1 million to be there. And among the crowd was Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, the Journal reported.

Pfizer is among the companies who developed one of the first COVID-19 vaccines. Trump ventured into the territory on Tuesday during an open press Cabinet meeting where he told reporters gathered for the event: 'Operation Warp Speed, people say, was one of the greatest achievements ever in politics or in the military, because it was almost a military procedure.' RFK Jr., an anti-vaxxer at the helm of the Make America Healthy Again movement, was at the table with all other members of the president's Cabinet for the more than three-hour event. 'Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine — he is pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability,' a spokesperson for HHS told the Daily Mail.

Trump said 'we did a great job with [COVID]. Never got the credit for the job we did.' 'Everybody, including [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, said that Operation Warp Speed – what you did with that, nobody can believe it.' 'We did a good job with that – as good as you could possibly do,' he added. Trump's private comments to donors sheds light on the tricky territory the president has to tip-toe around when it comes to the White House's vaccine policies. It all reached a head on Wednesday when the administration fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez after less than a month in the role.

Monarez refused to cave into pressure to resign and was ultimately ousted over clashes with Kennedy over vaccine policy at the CDC that she felt contradicted scientific evidence. Kennedy has said that the agency supports 'safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them.' 'That's why we're moving beyond the limitations of mRNA and investing in better solutions,' he added. But infectious disease experts have argued that the mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe, and they credit its development during the first Trump administration with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

In a message to all CDC following Monarez's ouster, Kennedy wrote: 'I am committed to working with you to restore trust, transparency, and credibility to the CDC.' 'Your daily efforts—often unseen—save lives,' he added in the message obtained by the Daily Mail. 'Reform does not diminish your work; it strengthens it. The American people are ready to believe in this agency again if we show them that integrity, accountability, and science guide every decision.' Reports emerged on Thursday that RFK Jr. named his deputy, Jim O'Neill, as the CDC's acting director.

Top MAHA advisor Dr Aseem Malhotra said this week that Trump's administration could pull the mRNA COVID vaccines from the U.S. market 'within months,' even if it causes 'chaos.' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing on Thursday that no actions taken will impact availability of the shot. Trump embraced during the 2024 campaign Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again initiative and therefore brought into the fold a slew of anti-vaxxer constituents in the movement. During Tuesday's cabinet meeting, Trump touched on the controversial topic and allegations from the anti-vaxxer community that vaccines are connected to an uptick in instances of autism.

'There has to be something artificially causing this, meaning a [expletive] or something, and I know you're looking very strongly at different things,' Trump said. Kennedy claims the reason that autism in children is on the rise is due to 'interventions' that he would detail next month. Previously, the HHS Secretary has linked frequency to the growing vaccine schedule for kids. His private comments about Operation Warp Speed suggest that Trump doesn't fully agree with the anti-vaccine sentiment.

Launched at the height of the pandemic in May 2020, the initiative was a private-public partnership aimed at accelerating the development and distribution of vaccines and treatments to combat the COVID-19 vaccine. It was backed by $10 billion in funding from the CARES Act and involved HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH and the Department of Defense. On November 9, 2020, when Trump was still in office but was defeated by Joe Biden for a second term, Pfizer-BioNTech announced it had developed a vaccine that was 90 percent effective. The FDA approved on December 11, 2020 emergency use authorization for the first COVID-19 jab in the U.S.