Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, called Mr. Trump’s claim “very dangerous.”
“Even for him,” she said Saturday at a news conference, “it went beyond the pale, in terms of how he would jeopardize the health and well-being of the American people, accuse the F.D.A. of politics, when he is the one who has tried to inject himself in the scientific decisions of the administration.”
“Staggeringly dangerous,” Holden Thorp, the editor in chief of the journal Science, tweeted in response to the president’s statement. Referring to Dr. Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, he wrote, “We need @SteveFDA to stay strong.”
Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic has cost him politically, and criticism of him on that point was a major theme of the Democratic National Convention last week. With the Republican National Convention beginning on Monday, his team is under pressure to shift the narrative.
Dr. Gottlieb also used his talk show appearance to defend the F.D.A. and its employees, saying that rigorous science, not politics, guides the approval process for potential vaccines.
“I firmly reject the idea that they would slow up anything, or accelerate anything for that matter, based on any kind of political consideration, and any consideration, other than what’s best for the public health and a real sense of mission to patients,” Dr. Gottlieb said.
Mr. Meadows, meanwhile, sidestepped questions about Mr. Trump’s charge of political bias, saying the president was merely keeping the pressure on career bureaucrats to deliver treatment breakthroughs.
“He had to make sure that they felt the heat,” Mr. Meadows said on “This Week” on ABC. “If they don’t see the light, they need to feel the heat, because the American people are suffering.”
