Former White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx detailed her struggle to advise former President Donald Trump during the pandemic due to the outside information he was receiving.
“I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made. 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 during an interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan.
She added, “I don’t know to this day who, but I know what I sent up and I know that what was in his hands was different from that.”
Watch her comments below:
"I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made. So I know that someone … was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president. I don't know to this day who." — Dr. Birx pic.twitter.com/ql811iB8WG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2021
During the same interview, Birx indicated she often considered quitting her role, as IJR reported.
“Always. I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that every day?” Birx said.
She continued, “Colleagues of mine that I had known for decades, decades, in that one experience, because I was in the White House, decided that I had become this political person, even though they had known me forever. I had to ask myself every morning, is there something that I think I can do that would be helpful in responding to this pandemic? And it’s something I asked myself every night.”
Birx announced she was retiring in December following criticism she received for traveling over the Thanksgiving weekend after health experts advised against it, as IJR previously reported.
Dr. Anthony Fauci reflected on what it feels like to transition to the Biden administration, as IJR reported.
“The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is and know that’s it, let the science speak, it is somewhat of a liberating feeling,” he said during an appearance at a White House briefing.
