Dr. Deborah Birx’s Rehabilitation Book Tour Keeps Getting Interrupted By Reality
Birx, a leading member of Trump’s COVID response team who is now promoting a book about her experience, hit a snag in her attempt to defend her silence as Trump mishandled the pandemic.
BY APRIL 28, 2022
Former White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx visits Fox News Channel Studios on April 27, 2022.
BY JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGES
Dr. Deborah Birx’s rehabilitation tour hit a 12-minute speed bump this week, as CNN anchor Brianna Keilar confronted the former Trump COVID response coordinator about things she said—and, perhaps most notably did not—during her tenure in Donald Trump’s White House. Birx, whose failure to speak out against Trump’s false claims about the coronavirus came to define her legacy, has been making the rounds to promote her new book, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, COVID-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late. In it, she writes that the majority of the deaths after the first surge could have been “mitigated or reduced substantially with better leadership.” Keilar began her interview by asking, “Does that include, with better leadership from you?”—a question on many minds, apparently, based on the damning videos of what Birx was actually saying at that time that have recirculated in response to her press blitz. (Birx replied, “That includes all of us.”) One such video was played back to the doctor during the interview:
Keilar—who has previously criticized Birx for, in the post-Trump era, pushing a narrative that minimizes the extent to which she helped enable the president’s catastrophic handling of the pandemic—showed Birx a compilation of videos of Trump advocating for the U.S. to do less testing because it would decrease the number of cases. “Things were being said, and we were doing the opposite,” Birx said in response, claiming the task force was “spending billions” to expand testing behind the scenes. “You talk about what you’re doing privately. But that comes up completely in the face against what he is saying very publicly, and what you are not necessarily saying publicly to counter what he was doing at the time,” Keilar noted. Birx claimed the silence on her part was a result of her having “no access to national media" after a April 23 press conference in which Trump suggested treating COVID by injecting people with bleach and Birx, while visibly uncomfortable, said nothing to counter the unhinged and dangerous notion. “Yes you did [have access to national media],” Keilar said, “if you chose to speak to them. But you chose not to.” Birx then pivoted to the argument that she would have been fired from the White House if she spoke to the press independently and “had to find another way to make sure my voice was heard.”
Indeed, as CNN’s Jake Tapper noted, Birx not only had access to national media, but to CNN specifically. Tapper, who also seemed to be having a hard time reconciling Birx’s attempt to rewrite history when he had her on his show this week, reminded her how, when he’d asked her about the Trump disinfectant comments days after they were made, she was bothered that it was still in the news cycle. “Do you regret not taking that opportunity to provide the correct information to the American people about why they should not ingest bleach instead of chastising the news media?” Birx responded by noting what she did behind closed doors, and that she was “just so focused on [conveying] the data” of the spread at that time. But, she told Tapper, “You point out a very important piece.
Kimberly Leonard and Grace Panetta
Dr. Deborah Birx is out with a tell-all book about her time in the Trump administration.
Birx says her first meeting with Trump in March 2020 about COVID-19 lasted only 30 seconds.
She failed to impress on Trump that the novel coronavirus was far more serious than the flu.
Dr. Deborah Birx's first meeting with President Donald Trump about COVID-19 lasted only 30 seconds before he lost interest and turned the channel to Fox News, Birx writes in her new memoir.
Birx, a leading public-health expert and diplomat known for her work on HIV/AIDS, was persuaded by Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security advisor at the time, to leave her post at the State Department as the US's global AIDS coordinator to serve as the coordinator of the White House's newly formed coronavirus task force.
Birx's first met with Trump on March 2, 2020, nine days before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. By that point, public-health experts across the globe closely following the data on the virus' spread were alarmed.
Birx's goal in that meeting, she writes, was to impress upon Trump the urgency of the situation and to convey that the highly contagious and deadly COVID-19 virus, which could be spread largely by those with no symptoms, was nothing like the seasonal flu.
When Birx finally got Trump's attention in the crowded room, things didn't go as she had hoped.
"Mr. President, this is not like the flu. This is far more serious than the flu. We have to shape our response differently," she told Trump, according to the book.
Trump, she writes, flashed a "glib grimace" of a smile before responding: "Well, the people I'm talking to say this isn't going to be any worse than the flu."
"Mr. President, I don't know who are you speaking with, but I have evidence to fully support the conclusion that this outbreak is going to be nothing like the seasonal flu or even pandemic flu. This virus is very deadly," she said, according to the book.
"Well these are good people," he replied, according to Birx. "Smart people. I trust these people. They know what they're saying."
Birx repeated her concerns about the virus, but Trump lost interest.
"His eyes return to his television screens. He reaches for the remote control, and the voice of someone at Fox News enters what passed for a conversation between us," Birx writes. "I don't hear the rest. Someone takes a few steps toward me and gestures toward the door. I've had less than thirty seconds to speak with the president."
Birx says other presidents she's worked for, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, "had the ability to shift gears and direct their focused attention in a way President Trump has not."
"I'm not going to get him to change," she writes. "I have to change my approach. Experience has taught me that you have to meet people where they are."
In the book, "Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, COVID-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It's Too Late," published on Tuesday, Birx describes her tumultuous experience on the White House COVID-19 task force and suggests the Trump administration's handling of the virus contained numerous flaws and missteps.
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