Fauci Defends Birx Against Attacks: People Should ‘Cut Her Some Slack,’ She Was ‘In a Tough Situation’

Dr. Anthony Fauci defended Dr. Deborah Birx to Chris Cuomo on CNN Wednesday, telling him that people should consider her situation and “cut her some slack.”

“You know, Chris, she was in a tough situation,” Fauci told Cuomo, after the host asked whether Birx should have “said more” when she was part of the coronavirus task force during the administration of former President Donald Trump. “You really need to understand, she was living in the White House. She had an office in the lower level of the West Wing. And I guess, obviously, you say she could have done more, but it was really tough on her. She was a military person. She understands the chain of command.”

“I think if you ask her now, she probably would say she should have done more, but you really need to cut her some slack, the way I do,” Fauci added. “She was in a tough situation.”

Cuomo then asked Fauci the same question, whether he should have said more about Trump’s misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, even if it meant losing his job.

“Well, you know, I don’t think you can come out and say this guy is lying,” Fauci said. “I don’t know how good that would have been.”

“I certainly clashed with the president, you know that,” Fauci reminded Cuomo. “We had a considerable amount of stress and tension between us when I spoke out against him with hydroxychloroquine, when he said this is going to end tomorrow, it’s going to go away. I said no, it’s not just going to go away. There were a lot of things we did that was contradictory to him, which caused a lot of stress and strain. I want to put that behind us and look ahead.”

Birx, a longtime immunology expert who was nominated by former President Barack Obama to serve as the State Department’s global AIDS director, has faced considerable criticism and blame for her role on Trump’s coronavirus task force, which was made of up roughly a dozen people. Democratic lawmakers, and other critics, have said she’s either responsible or complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Trump also criticized Birx, both during his administration and after.

Since Birx’s bombshell interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in which she said that most coronavirus deaths “could have been mitigated” after the initial surge if the Trump administration had taken action sooner, former Surgeon General Jerome Adams has publicly defended Birx, saying she is being held to a “different standard” than her male colleagues on the task force.

You can watch Fauci’s comments above, via CNN.