January 24, 2021: Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield Baffled by Trump COVID Response

 

1/24/21: The dust has barely settled at the White House, with the Trump folks moving out and the Biden folks moving in, but at least one member of Team Trump is kicking dirt on the boss’s legacy.

 

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“That was the place where people would let me say what needed to be said about the pandemic, both in private with the governors and then in following up, doing press to talk to the people of that state.” 

Dr. Deborah Birx

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Dr. Deborah Birx, once a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, was asked if she had ever considered leaving the team. “Always,” she remarked, without hesitation. 

“I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,” Birx explained. “So, I know that someone – or someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.” 

Birx said she wrote 310 detailed daily reports, but didn’t know if her boss read them. “I had very little exposure to President Trump,” she said. “There was no team, full-time working in the White House on coronavirus.” So she had to recruit her own help. Birx, a former colonel in the U.S. Army, had 41 years’ service in government and called on people she knew from previous work.

President Trump said he liked Dr. Birx's scarves.

 

Appearing on Face the Nation, Dr. Birx told host Margaret Brennan that she believed her science-based guidance had been censored by the White House. Birx said she was eventually blocked from appearing on the news. Instead, she went out on the road, to speak to state and local healthcare providers. “That was the place where people would let me say what needed to be said about the pandemic, both in private with the governors and then in following up, doing press to talk to the people of that state.” 

Asked if she believed the Trump administration suppressed vital information on the pandemic to win the election, Dr. Birx responded: “I don’t know what their motivation was. I know that I was so frustrated that I realized that the only way – that if I could not get a voice internally, that I could get a voice out at the state level.” 

Were Trump’s comments about the “hoax” harmful? 

“When you have a pandemic when you’re relying on every American to change their behavior, communication is absolutely key,” Birx replied. “And so every time a statement was made by a political leader that wasn’t consistent with public health needs, that derailed our response.”

 

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IN AN INTERVIEW published in The New York Times today, Dr. Fauci went into even more detail in describing what it was like to work in the Trump White House. 

Excerpts follow: 

I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, “Well, it’s not that bad, right?” And I would say, “Yes, it is that bad.” It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it. Not saying, “I want you to minimize it,” but, “Oh, really, was it that bad?”

 

That much might be expected, with any president wanting to put the best face on a problem, and convince the American people that the crisis was in hand. Trump was different than any of the other seven presidents Fauci had worked for. As this blogger might put it, he was incredibly ill-informed. 

Fauci explained: 

And the other thing that made me really concerned was, it was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, “Hey, I heard about this drug, isn’t it great?” or, “Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal.” And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.”

 

He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important. It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine; it was a variety of alternative-medicine-type approaches. It was always, “A guy called me up, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.” That’s when my anxiety started to escalate.

 

Even worse, the president surrounded himself “with people saying things that didn’t make any scientific sense.” 

Eventually, White House aides, if not the president himself, began to see Dr. Fauci as the problem, not so much the virus. He didn’t like contradicting the president. “But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK.” 

White House aides soon turned to “nefarious” methods to try to damage his reputation, he said. 

After that, Trump brought in Dr. Scott Atlas, a heart surgeon, to give him advice. Atlas and Fauci clashed repeatedly. Fauci was asked, did this make his job worse? No, he replied, his “day job” was still director of N.I.A.I.D. He did not have to go to the White House every day. He felt bad for one colleague, who did. “Debbie Birx had to live with this person [Atlas] in the White House every day,” he said, “so it was much more of a painful situation for her.” 

Still, he never really considered quitting the Task Force. 

When people just see you standing up there, they sometimes think you’re being complicit in the distortions emanating from the stage. But I felt that if I stepped down, that would leave a void. Someone’s got to not be afraid to speak out the truth. They would try to play down real problems and have a little happy talk about how things are OK. And I would always say, “Wait a minute, hold it folks, this is serious business.” So there was a joke — a friendly joke, you know — that I was the skunk at the picnic.

 

He and his wife discussed his leaving his post, but ultimately agreed, “If I did walk away, the skunk at the picnic would no longer be at the picnic.” It was better to remain. If he couldn’t change any minds, the least he could try to do was make others realize “that nonsense could not be spouted” without his pushing back. 

“I think in the big picture, I felt it would be better for the country and better for the cause for me to stay, as opposed to walk away.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control during the Trump administration, was also asked what his “greatest disappointment” was in not being able to better mitigate the spread of COVID-19. 

“My greatest disappointment was the lack of consistency of public health messaging and the inconsistency of civic leaders to reinforce the public health message.” (You can read between the lines what that means –  “civic leaders.”) 

Dr. Redfield continued, “I’m very disappointed that some civic leaders decided to make this issue of mitigation a political football, rather than embracing the public health measures.” 

You know. Like, mask-wearing.

 

Certain “civic leaders” seemed to think masks were an abomination. Redfield was asked how he had been traveling, back and forth between Washington D.C. and Atlanta during this period. “You know,” he told a reporter, “I believe if I wear my mask, wash my hands and social distance, I can fly safely.” 

Simple message. Who would disagree with that? 

Certain “civic leaders.”