Birx says she ‘always’ considered quitting Trump COVID-19 task force

Deborah Birx said in a new interview that she “always considered” resigning from the White House coronavirus task force while President Trump was in office.

Birx, who had previously served in public health roles in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”  that colleagues frequently assumed she was co-signing a political agenda with her role as  White House coronavirus response coordinator.

“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,” she told host Margaret Brennan. “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.”

Asked whether she considered quitting, Birx replied: “Always. I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that every day?”

In an exclusive interview with @FaceTheNation Moderator @margbrennan, Dr. Deborah Birx, the former coordinator of Pres. Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force, says she weighed whether to quit.

“Always. I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that every day,” Dr. Birx says. pic.twitter.com/a11AHqu3zI

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 23, 2021

“I always feel like I could have done more, been more outspoken, maybe been more outspoken publicly. I didn’t know all the consequences of all of these issues,” Birx said when asked about her biggest mistake on the task force.

She also described her ongoing frustration with her perception that her guidance was going ignored.

“[W]hen it became a point where I wasn’t getting anywhere and that was like right before the election, I wrote a very detailed communication plan of what needed to happen the day after the election and how that needed to be executed,” she said. “And there was a lot of promise that that would happen.”

Birx announced her retirement as President Biden took office last week. Another of the public faces of the public health response to the virus, Anthony Fauci, remained in his position as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

–Updated at 9:01 a.m.