White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said former Trump administration scientist Dr. Rick Bright is “not just a disgruntled employee, in my judgment, he’s a deserter in the war on the China virus,” during an interview on Fox News.
“He had a chance,” Navarro said. “He was asked to go over to NIH [National Institutes of Health] and lead a $1 billion initiative to get testing to the people of America and he refused to do that.”
Bright filed a whistleblower complaint, saying he was the ousted from his position after conflicting with the Trump administration about its response to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, he testified that the Department of Health and Human Services was "dismissive" toward his cautionary advice about the crisis and said if the country doesn't heed his warnings “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history.”
Bright also testified that a supplier short of N95 masks warned, “We are in deep s**t, the world is.”
“If you look at it [Bright's whistleblower complaint] very carefully … he's complaining, basically, that he knew it all and we weren’t doing anything,” Navarro said. “Well, guess what? From February 2, when I exchanged some emails with him … and we worked with HHS, we were able to accelerate all of these things, vaccine development, therapeutics, and masks, on behalf of this White House, at the direction of this White House.”
Navarro added that “The idea that this White House wasn't moving as fast as it could from January 30,” after the president restricted flights to the U.S. from China is incorrect.
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