Fox pundit wants to name Covid vaccine after president

'Years from now, it would become just a kind of generic name'

Fox News pundit Geraldo Rivera wants a jab of Trump in every American's veins.

The network's correspondent-at-large suggested naming the Covid-19 vaccines after the president as a “nice gesture” that will live on in an eternal reminder of Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus.

"With the world so divided and everybody telling him he’s got to give up and it’s time to leave and time to transition and all the rest of it, why not name the vaccine ‘The Trump?’" Mr Rivera said.

 

"Make it like, ‘Have you gotten your Trump yet?’ It would be a nice gesture to him, and, years from now, it would become just a kind of generic name.”

Speaking on Fox & Friends, Mr Rivera's suggestion came after Pfizer and BioNTech said they would submit to the US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday for emergency use authorization for their coronavirus vaccine candidate, "BNT162b2".

It would be the first Covid vaccine to see approval in the US, and is expected to be followed within days by the candidate vaccine from Moderna, "mRNA-1273".

If approved, distribution of the two experimental vaccines claiming 95 per cent effectiveness could begin as soon as December.

Mr Trump has reportedly been fuming that he won't be in the White House to take credit for the successful vaccines while Joe Biden will try to "steal" credit, according to The Daily Beast.

On Monday, the president tweeted his claim for being on the right side of vaccine history.

"For those great ‘historians’, please remember that these great discoveries, which will end the China Plague, all took place on my watch!” Mr Trump wrote.

The consolation prize of naming the vaccine would enshrine the president's branding on every American who takes it for all time.

"Have you got your Trump yet? Oh yeah I got my Trump I'm fine," Mr Rivera said.

"I wish we could honour him in that way because he is definitely the prime architect of this Operation Warp Speed and but for him, we'd still be wading into the grim winter, for these amazing, miraculous medical breakthroughs."