President Donald Trump's onetime chief of staff on Monday denied claims made by Drs. Deborah Birx, Trump's coronavirus response coordinator, and Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about their time in the prevous administration.
“What we heard last night on CNN was rhetoric we never heard in the West Wing from Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx,” Meadows told former Trump strategist Steve Bannon on his podcast, “War Room,” on Monday.
Birx said in a CNN special report that was previewed on Sunday that in the Trump White House at the onset of the pandemic "there was a group that really believed this wasn't as a big of deal as we were making it. Then there was the other group that just was more fatalistic, that no matter what we did, the outcome was going to be the same."
She added, "There was a feeling in the White House from the beginning -- and I don't know if this is true or not because I never confronted the rresident, because I didn't have access to him by that time -- that the president was not supportive of mask-wearing in the White House.”
For his part, Fauci described Trump’s call to reopen states during the pandemic as "a punch to the chest."
He added, "I said to myself, 'Oh my goodness, what is going on here?' It shocked me because it was such a jolt to what we were trying to do.”
Birx also said that she had some “very uncomfortable” and “very difficult” talks with Trump after she appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” in August and warned that COVID-19 had become “extraordinarily widespread” in rural and urban communities.
Meadows offered a different version of events, though.
“I can tell you about the ‘uncomfortable’ phone call. It had nothing to do with any of that,” Meadows said. “It had to do with the fact that Deborah Birx started talking about keeping schools closed and remote learning. And that was what it was all about because that was not based on science.”
He also claimed that Trump “never went against” the advice he received from his medical advisers.
“They were never held back from going public. In fact, most of the time, Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci both would agree publicly — and they have stated so publicly — that the president did everything that they asked him to do,” Meadows said.
“But what is also alarming is to have this revisionist type of program last night to suggest that there was something different that should have been done when they were actually in the room helping make the decisions.
"In fact, if anything, for those kind of comments to come out last night, it was not only alarming but just very disingenuous to suggest that the president was pushing back.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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