(LifeSiteNews) — As the Trump administration moves ahead with its “Make America Healthy Again” initiative on a range of health subjects, retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson is urging America not to forget the lingering need to hold accountable those who mismanaged the COVID-19 outbreak and unleashed the controversial COVID shots on the country.
This week, a clip went viral on social media of Carson, who served as the first Trump administration’s Secretary of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and is currently advising the Department of Agriculture on nutrition, healthcare, and housing matters, speaking to Children’s Health Defense (which was founded by current Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).
Dr. Ben Carson: We cannot allow what was done during Covid to be “swept under the rug”.
“Dr. Fauci… [eventually admitted] that there was no science behind any of what he was saying.”
“We know that the side effects from Covid vaccinations far exceeded anything else in the last… pic.twitter.com/5rTARB29DI
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) November 30, 2025
Carson noted that the public has “had to put up with a lot of lies” since the 2020 crisis that “really disrupted public trust,” many perpetuated by the first Trump and Biden administrations’ top COVID advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“Dr. Fauci said you don’t need to wear a mask, then you do need to wear a mask,” Carson recalled, “eventually admitting that there was no science behind any of what he was saying.”
On top of Fauci’s contradictory advice on masking and social distancing, arguably the most consequential falsehoods surrounded the COVID shots, which President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed (OWS) initiative had ready for use in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested.
America was told “if you get the shot, you can’t transmit the disease,” which turned out to be false, and “there are no real side effects,” Carson said. “Of course, we know that the side effects from COVID vaccinations far exceeded anything else in the last 30 years combined.”
Carson declared it was important that America not “let it be swept under the rug” by educating people about what happened and the real facts behind it. “I think that’s a big part of what MAHA is going to be doing,” he said.
A large body of evidence has found that mass restrictions on personal and economic activity undertaken in 2020 and part of 2021 caused far more harm than good in terms of personal freedom and economics as well as public health, and that lives could have been saved through far less burdensome methods, such as the promotion of established therapeutic drugs, narrower protections focused on those most at risk (such as the elderly and infirm), and increasing vitamin D intake.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has called America’s COVID response one of “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” against which Congress, state legislatures, and courts alike were largely negligent to protect constitutional rights, personal liberty, and the rule of law.
As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a body of evidence also steadily accumulated that, while the COVID shots failed to prevent transmission and more importantly carried severe risks of their own. COVID was a sticking point for many in Trump’s base, yet he doggedly refused to disavow OWS.
Since leaving office, Trump repeatedly promoted the shots as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.” The negative reception to such comments got him to drop the subject for a while, but in July 2022, he complained that “we did so much in terms of therapeutics and a word that I’m not allowed to mention. But I’m still proud of that word, because we did that in nine months, and it was supposed to take five years to 12 years. Nobody else could have done it. But I’m not mentioning it in front of my people.”
So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current vaccines optional but not supporting work to develop successors.
In early August, Kennedy announced the government would be “winding down” almost $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine projects and rejecting future exploration of the technology in favor of more conventional vaccines. Later that month, HHS revoked emergency use authorizations (EUA) for the COVID shots, which were used to justify the long-since-rescinded mandates and sidestep other procedural hurdles, and in its place issued “marketing authorization” for those who meet a minimum risk threshold for the following mRNA shots: Moderna (6+ months), Pfizer (5+), and Novavax (12+).
“These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors,” Kennedy said, making good on his pledge to “end covid vaccine mandates, keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable, demand placebo-controlled trials from companies,” and “end the emergency.”