President Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies “justify the success” of Covid vaccines as his health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., convenes a panel that may seek to limit public access to the shot later this month. 

In a TruthSocial.com post on Monday morning, the president said that while some believe that the vaccine is a “miracle,” others disagree. He wrote that he believes the responsibility falls on drug manufacturers to share more data with the public about the vaccine’s success rate. 

“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!” the president wrote. “With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.” 

Mr. Trump, whose first administration oversaw the development of the vaccine, has stood by Mr. Kennedy amid recent chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Late last week, the president dismissed his hand-picked, Senate-confirmed director, Susan Monarez, after she reportedly pushed back against Mr. Kennedy’s attempts to change vaccine policy. Her firing led several other top scientists and doctors at the agency to quit their jobs in protest. Ms. Monarez was swiftly replaced by Mr. Kennedy’s deputy, Jim O’Neill. 

“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???” Mr. Trump asked in his social media post on Monday. He says companies are letting Mr. Kennedy and CDC leadership “rip themselves apart,” as they try “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!!!” Mr. Trump continued. 

He even hedged on the contribution of the program to develop the vaccines — started in May 2020 and known as Operation Warp Speed — to ending the pandemic. “I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” Mr. Trump wrote. 

According to the most recent information available from the centers, the Covid vaccines averted approximately 68,000 hospitalizations during the 2023–24 respiratory season. Data posted by the agency in February 2025 found that vaccinated people over 18 were 30 percent less likely than their unvaccinated counterparts to go to emergency departments and urgent care centers for Covid-related illnesses while those vaccinated over age 65 were 45-46 percent less likely than the unvaccinated in the same age group. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalizations for immunocompromised adults over the age of 65 was 40 percent compared to the unvaccinated. 

Mr. Trump’s demands come less than three weeks before a vaccine advisory panel, which has the authority to determine which vaccines are available to certain people, is set to meet. The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices has been stacked with Mr. Kennedy’s fellow vaccine skeptics after he fired all of the panel’s previous 17 members earlier this summer. 

The advisory committee is set to meet on September 18 and 19 to consider setting requirements for those who want to take this year’s Covid booster shot. According to an agenda posted by the Centers for Disease Control, the committee will also review the Hepatitis B vaccine; the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella — collectively known as the MMRV vaccine, and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or RSV vaccine.

The Republican chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, who is a physician, has called on the advisory committee to postpone its September meeting over concern the gathering may lack a “scientific process.”

“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” Dr. Cassidy said in a statement last week. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted.”

“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” he added. 

Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control who served presidents of both parties piled on the criticism of Mr. Kennedy on Monday morning when they argued in a New York Times opinion piece that the secretary is actively endangering the public with his attempts to restrict access to vaccines. 

“What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months … is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced,” the former directors, who have a century of combined work experience at the center, wrote.