WATCH: Trump Admin Whistleblower Gets Choked Up Over Slow Response to Pandemic: ‘We Could Have Done Something and We Didn’t’

The Trump administration whistleblower who was abruptly removed from his job got choked up while sharply criticizing the White House over its missed opportunities in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During a short preview of her 60 Minutes interview that will broadcast in full on May 17, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Dr. Rick Bright, about his whistleblower complaint. Bright claims he was demoted from his position in late April after raising objections of “cronyism” and misguided emphasis on hydroxycholorquine, the unproven drug that President Donald Trump had pushed as a possible “game changer” in treating the virus. Both the FDA and NIH have recommended against treating patients with the drug outside of highly controlled cliental trials.

“He says he was removed from his job for putting science over politics and he filed a whistleblower complaint earlier this week,” O’Donnell noted in her introduction. “Today, a federal agency found ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that the administration was retaliating against Bright. Well, tonight, a preview of our wide-ranging conversation.”

“The president called you a disgruntled employee,” O’Donnell pointed out, referencing an unsubstantiated charge Trump leveled at Bright on Wednesday.

“I am not disgruntled,” Bright replied. “I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing life-saving tools for Americans. I’m frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.”

The CBS anchor then pointed to Bright emails from January, where he was raising red flags about the outbreak and warning that the administration lacked the necessary personal protective equipment to fight the virus’ spread.

“We see too many doctors and nurses now dying. And I was thinking that we could have done more to get those masks and those supplies to them sooner,” an emotional Bright said, his voice cracking. “And if we had, would they still be alive today? That’s a horrible thought to think about the time that passed where we could have done something and we didn’t.”

O’Donnell recounts Bright claiming that his persistent pushback rankled the leadership in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“You believe you were retaliated against because you raised concerns about hydroxychloroquine,” she said, which he affirmed. She then asked why he chose not to accept the reassignment to the NIH, where he was charged with improved testing platforms.

“That’s an important initiative,” Bright acknowledged, but challenged the logic and timing of the decision. “I’m the director of Barda. To take me out of our organization focused on drugs and vaccines and diagnostics in the middle of a pandemic, the worst public health crisis that our country has faced in a century, and decapitate the Barda organization, to move me over to a very small focused project of any scale, of any level of importance is not responsible, didn’t make sense.”

“A spokesperson for HHS says this is a personnel matter under review,” O’Donnell added at the end of the segment. “But that they strongly disagree with the allegations and characterizations in Bright’s whistleblower complaint.”

Watch the video above, via CBS News.