White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday that the former Health and Human Services official who criticized President Donald Trump as “dismissive” of the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been paying attention to the government’s response.
Former HHS scientist Rick Bright filed a whistleblower complaint contending that he was dismissed from his job after he disagreed with the government’s response to the outbreak, saying in his complaint that other officials in the department were “dismissive” after he warned that “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history” if the proper steps weren’t taken.
“It sounds like Mr. Bright hasn’t really been paying that much attention at all,” McEnany told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday.
“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest funding allocated to BARDA [the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright wrote in testimony to the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee.
“HHS leadership was dismissive about my dire predictions about what I assumed would be a broader outbreak and the pressing need to act, and were therefore unwilling to act with the urgency that the situation required,” he added.
“When he talks about the pandemic playbook, we actually put into place a pandemic preparedness document with recommendations long before the pandemic ever came. It sounds like he hasn’t been paying attention when he suggests that Americans should social distance and wash their hands." McEnany said on Fox News.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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