COVID-19/FDA: [Reporter: “Convalescent plasma, as a treatment, has been around for, you know, over 100 years… What went into the effort for this to be approved for COVID-19? And was that holdup political in nature?”]
“Well, I think that there might have been a holdup, but we broke the logjam over the last week, to be honest. I think that there are people in the FDA and actually in your larger department that can see things being held up and wouldn’t mind so much. That’s my opinion — a very strong opinion. And that’s for political reasons. This has nothing to do with politics; this has to do with life and death.
So we are being very strong, and we are being very forthright, and we have got some incredible answers. And we’re not going to let them be held up because every day is lives. And we’re not going to let that happen. Okay?”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | August 23, 2020,” whitehouse.gov, Aug. 23, 2020