The New York Times should be "ashamed of themselves" for the "appalling" attack on coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday.
“I have not seen anyone poring over data the way Dr. Birx has, and the attack on her was frankly appalling and egregious, and The New York Times should be ashamed of themselves,” McEnany said during Tuesday's White House press briefing, reports Fox News. Her comments came after a report in The Times Saturday on the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, which suggested that Birx was “more central than publicly known” to the administration's judgment that the virus' severity was diminishing, rather than becoming worse.
Birx's colleagues described her as being dedicated and hard-working, said The Times, but her assessments did not account for how President Donald Trump's push to return the country to normal would change the measures that kept the infection numbers down.
The article also quoted Dr. Anthony Fauci, a friend of Birx's for 30 years, as saying she was "a different species" than him and more political, while he often commented that his darker assessment about the spread of coronavirus in the United States made him more like the "skunk at the garden party."
McEnany, while closing her press briefing, outlined Birx's achievements, including her work as the State Department's global AIDS coordinator and as an Army colonel, and said the Times' "attack" was "based on no facts."
“Dr. Birx for weeks has been sending out this data to governors, 400 pages of data to our governors, so they have the best information to make the best decisions for their people and their respective states. I have not seen anyone poring over data the way Dr. Birx has and the attack on her was frankly appalling and egregious and The New York Times should be very ashamed of themselves,” McEnany said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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