We are hearing more today from Dr. Deborah Birx about her time working on the Trump administration’s coronavirus taskforce. She told CBS’s Margaret Brennan, “There were people (in the White House) who definitely believed that this was a hoax.” She also suggested someone was presenting Donald Trump with data that was different from what she was coming up with.
Dr. Deborah Birx on #Covid19 #disinformation inside the #Trump White House: “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made” she tells @margbrennan
“Someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president"
More on @FaceTheNation pic.twitter.com/1TMlIdvnWR
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) January 24, 2021
Dr. Birx is getting criticized for not revealing all this information earlier. Dr. Seema Yasmin, a medical analyst told CNN:
“Imagine if Dr. Birx was telling us then what she is sharing now, what impact that could potentially have had in cutting through the misinformation and showing the public even those people who believed Donald Trump, look, here is a top scientist saying there are parallel data streams she hasn’t signed off on some of these graphs but instead she stayed silent. We saw that Dr. Fauci of course did contradict the President as I think a scientist with integrity should do and he paid a price for that for sure. It would have been really impactful I think for her to have done the same earlier on.”
I realize when you’re working for a president, you aren’t always in a position to open challenge him. However, Dr. Birx went out of her way to praise Trump and just straight up lied. Trying to make herself seem like the victim is equally dishonest. https://t.co/geGp1vvfyC
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) January 24, 2021
Watch the interview above.