Steve Scalise: “I never suggested that. In fact, I said at the outset that these companies are in direct communication with the FDA on a…”

“I never suggested that. In fact, I said at the outset that these companies are in direct communication with the FDA on a regular basis. That is what Operation Warp Speed is. In the old way of doing things, these companies would have submitted their data and would have waited months while some faceless bureaucrat let it sit on a desk and nothing happened. Instead, what the President did was said there will be direct contacts where they can communicate with the FDA. They are not the enemy. These companies aren't the enemy. The FDA is not the enemy. But it shouldn't be viewed as you are on one side and you are on the other side. They are both working together because they are both part of the smartest scientific community in the world. They work together because the FDA wants to get it right and these companies want to get it right. We saw one of them just a few days ago. They had a pause, which is the protocol. That is the safety protocol because there was a question in the testing, and they addressed it. I am sure there were many. I don't know directly, but I am sure there were many conversations with the FDA. But then they started up again, which means there wasn't a problem. But it meant they followed the protocols, which say, if you see something that you need to go review, you hold off, and then you go check that out. That is what one of these did, and now they are back on track. The others continue to go through, all of them, working with the FDA.…”