Jerome Adams Speaks Out on Politicization of Pandemic Under Trump

Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams has spoken out against the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic during the administration of former President Donald Trump.

Adams said during a Monday interview on C-SPAN's Washington Journal that communication about the science of the pandemic was lacking during his time as the country's top health official and only deteriorated as the political atmosphere became even more charged ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

"What didn't go well, and continues to go poorly, is the communication," Adams said. "We had a once-in-a-century pandemic superimposed on top of one of the most divisive presidential elections ... there's no other way to put it."

Adams said that the pandemic had been distorted by both major U.S. political parties. He complained that Democrats "ran on the idea" that voters were "all going to die" if they did not vote for them, while Republicans were "running on the idea that, 'hey there's nothing to see here, this is all going to go away.'"

"The truth is neither one of those was correct; the answer was somewhere in-between," said Adams. "That made it incredibly challenging for me to have a conversation."

"If I talk about masks, people automatically assume you're either pro-Trump or anti-Biden," he continued. "If I talk about vaccines, people say, 'well you're only saying that because you want to get Trump elected.'"

Adams took particular issue with Vice President Kamala Harris saying that she "would not trust Donald Trump" if a COVID-19 vaccine were quickly approved and rushed out before the 2020 election, while using very different rhetoric after being elected alongside President Joe Biden.

"It really frustrated me when I heard the current VP go out there and say, 'I would not trust a vaccine under this administration,' but then the second they got elected, it was, 'hey you need to trust the vaccine,'" Adams said.

"That's not me being political, that's me saying as a doctor, as a scientist, when you try to message, that becomes incredibly difficult," he added. "I think we ... I could have, should have, done a better job of trying to separate out the medicine, the science from the politics, even as hard as it was."

Last year, Adams expressed concerns that politics were getting in the way of "protecting our youth" while speaking out against a conservative push to remove mask mandates from schools.

"As a physician, as a public health expert, it's deeply troubling that it seems we're letting politics get in the way of protecting our youth," he said during an August 2021 CBS This Morning appearance. "As a father, I quite frankly think it's unconscionable."

Adams was nominated to be surgeon general by Trump and served in the role from August 2017 until January 2021. He was succeeded by current Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who was also his immediate predecessor.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.