Former Trump FDA Chief Scott Gottlieb: Trump’s Use of Covid Policies as Political Wedge Issue ‘Really Hurt Us’
Scott Gottlieb served as the Director of the FDA under Trump, leaving the administration in 2018. Since then, he has become a reliable and sometimes sage medical pundit appearing on many news programs. During an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, in promotion of his new book, Uncontrolled Spread, he blamed former President Donald Trump for using Covid mitigation policies as a political wedge issue.
Host Margaret Brennan wrapped the segment aired Sunday morning if Trump’s leadership affected how the pandemic played out. “Do you think, fundamentally, looking at everything you’ve analyzed, that the outcome of this pandemic would have been different if President Trump wasn’t in office?” she asked.
“I would have been different if we had different political decisions and the White House was exercising different leadership; there is no question about that,” Gottlieb replied. “There is no question that the White House made mistakes, and the lack of consistency was a big mistake, and also the lack of using the White House as an effective bully pulpit to really galvanize the collective action that could make a difference on the margins.”
He then pivoted to the politics of mitigation strategies, noting that Trump was guilty of “allowing us to get divided along political fault lines, in the setting of an election when things, the temperature was really high, I think really hurt us.” He then hedged and said that there were “fundamental weaknesses with our response, that, regardless of who was in power, we had an ill-prepared bureaucracy.”
Gottlieb also revealed that the six-feet of social distance standard was an arbitrary decision that came from an unnamed Trump political appointee that criticized what he saw as an impossible CDC recommendation of 10-feet distancing at the time.
Gottlieb revealed research that suggested a three-foot separation between masked individuals significantly reduced the spread, which was learned about in the Fall of 2020.
Had that been followed, many schools would have been able to reopen, suggesting that remote learning last year resulted from failed leadership from the Trump administration.
Watch above via CBS.
