From a review of Trump's plans to destroy government in NYRB by Walter Shaub Jr.:
The dead man’s wife explained why the couple had ingested fish tank cleaner: “I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that the stuff they’re talking about on TV?’” The bottle that killed Gary Lenius and sent Wanda Lenius to the hospital on March 22, 2020, contained chloroquine phosphate. Days earlier President Donald Trump had touted chloroquine as a possible “game changer” in the fight against Covid-19. “The nice part,” he assured the public, “is it’s been around for a long time, so we know that…if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.” Pharmacies saw alarming increases in prescriptions for chloroquine products.
In those first days of the pandemic, Trump repeatedly made dubious medical claims, in press conferences and on Twitter, that were then repeated on conservative television networks and social media. As the death toll rose, he sought quick solutions. During a press conference on April 23, 2020, Trump boasted that he had told the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, to find out if “disinfectant” could cure Covid-19 in humans, through “injection inside or almost a cleaning.” In the same press conference, Trump wondered aloud about ultraviolet light therapy: “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.”
Birx remained silent, blinked rapidly, and looked down. She was wishing “for the floor to open up and swallow me whole,” she writes in Silent Invasion, her memoir of her time in the Trump administration. “I had come into the White House knowing that having the president’s ear would be crucial to my success…. I had to continue to ensure that science was at the decision-making table inside.” This may explain her decision to damage her credibility by vouching for Trump as he offered dangerous misinformation about a pandemic that eventually killed more than one million Americans. “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” she told the Christian Broadcasting Network on March 25 that year. “And I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.”
Birx, a physician, award-winning researcher, and retired Army colonel, had been in public service for more than four decades. In 2014 President Obama appointed her as the State Department’s global HIV/AIDS coordinator. In the White House, Birx was meant to be what Politico dubbed a “czar-like figure,” coordinating the pandemic response and reporting directly to the vice-president. Working in the chaotic Trump administration, however, meant that she had to jockey with other Trump appointees for the president’s attention, and her influence waned over time.
As a political appointee, Birx was not protected by federal laws restricting how and for what reasons career government employees can be fired. The White House could fire her for any reason, or no reason at all. If she had debunked Trump’s claims during the press conference, he would probably have fired her. By remaining silent, she kept her job.
Trump has said that in a second term he wants to sidestep civil service laws that protect government employees from the kind of political pressure Birx faced in her temporary assignment. Those laws are meant to keep them loyal to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the public—not only the president.
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