Trump says he's 'never heard of' official leading U.S. coronavirus vaccine effort until abrupt demotion

Dr. Rick Bright, the career government infectious disease scientist who until Tuesday led a federal effort to create a COVID-19 vaccine, said Wednesday he was demoted and moved to the National Institutes of Health for favoring "science — not politics or cronyism," to combat the virus. "Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit," he said. President Trump and his allies spent weeks touting hydroxychloroquine but don't anymore.

Asked about Bright's demotion at Wednesday evening's coronavirus press briefing, Trump pleaded ignorance: "I've never heard of him. Guy says he was pushed out of a job, maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. You'd have to hear the other side. I don't know who he is."

The other side, unidentified current and former Health and Human Services Department (HHS) officials tell Politico and The Washington Post, is that Bright had clashed with his boss, Robert Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and that Bright's ouster had been under discussion for at least a year.

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Some HHS officials and outside observers told Politico they believed Bright was moving too slowly and investing in the wrong things, specifically IL-6 inflammation inhibitors. In his statement, Bright alluded to "clashes with HHS political leadership" over his efforts to "invest early in vaccines and supplies critical to saving American lives." Other officials, including Bright's former boss, praised him as a careful scientist and man of integrity.

Bright, a vaccine expert, learned of his move to NIH, where he has been assigned to work on diagnostic tests, when his name was removed from the website of the agency he led, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), after having been frozen out of his email, Politico reports.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.