President Donald Trump bemoaned the fact that one of his top coronavirus advisers recently “took the bait” from radical leftist House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to help spread further media fearmongering about the pandemic.
So Crazy Nancy Pelosi said horrible things about Dr. Deborah Birx, going after her because she was too positive on the very good job we are doing on combatting the China Virus, including Vaccines & Therapeutics. In order to counter Nancy, Deborah took the bait & hit us. Pathetic!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2020
After the Left’s tireless lionization of Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose partisan grandstanding has come under increasing scrutiny, Pelosi scrambled to find her own scientific scapegoat over the weekend.
Pelosi proceeded to trash Deborah Birx, the White House’s official coronavirus response coordinator, who often has worked in tandem alongside Fauci and was, likewise, a regular presence at the president’s early press briefings on the pandemic.
Although Birx worked for much of the Obama presidency as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Global HIV/AIDS, Pelosi claimed she was a Trump appointee.
Birx performed several other high-profile functions during the Obama administration, including US Global AIDS coordinator and US special representative for global health diplomacy.
Pelosi, who was speaker of the House for four years under Obama—from January 2007 to January 2011—does not appear to have gone on record raising concerns about Birx’s work at the CDC during that time.
However, during a meeting last week involving White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Pelosi reportedly smeared Birx, according to Politico, saying, “Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in.”
Pelosi doubled down on those remarks while appearing on ABC’s This Week while being pressed to follow up on the prior remarks.
“I think the president has been spreading disinformation about the virus and she is his appointee so, I don’t have confidence there, no,” Pelosi said.
Birx, who happened to be appearing on CNN around the time of Pelosi’s attack, was then broadsided by interviewer Dana Bash and asked to respond.
“I have tremendous respect for the speaker,” Birx sputtered diplomatically. “And I have tremendous respect for her long dedication to the American people.”
She also conceded several alarming claims Democrats have long sought to make about the virus, suggesting that it would spread to rural areas, despite evidence that the vast majority of cases and deaths have been in urban centers.
“What we are seeing today is different from March and April,” Birx said.
“It is extraordinarily widespread,” she added. “It’s into the rural as equal urban areas.”
Pelosi’s effort to work the refs included the suggesting that Birx was only delivering good news to the president, a claim echoed by a recent New York Times article.
The propagandist piece also tries to suggest, as Democrats have long sought, that Trump abandoned leadership in managing the crisis, despite the evidence to the contrary.
Trump clearly sought a more robust defense from Birx, however.
The attack comes as his relationship with Fauci—always contentious, seems to be showing even greater signs of wear.
The showboating NIAID director threw out an embarrassing opening-day pitch as the Major League Baseball season got underway, and is slated to accept a partisan public service award—alongside controversial former football quarterback Colin Kaepernick, from the Kennedy family.
Trump, in turn, tweeted out video of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, destroying Fauci while grilling him about whether radical leftist protests should be permitted—although he praised Fauci in the tweet as well.
Great job by Jim Jordan, and also some very good statements by Tony Fauci. Big progress being made! https://t.co/8Oeca9H3yq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2020
