Birx reveals she received a 'very uncomfortable' phone call from Trump after giving interview warning of severity of pandemic

Deborah Birx.
(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/CNN)

Of all the doctors CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta interviewed for the network's upcoming documentary COVID War: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out, which will air Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator, was "perhaps the most" introspective, he said.

In one of the clips CNN shared ahead of the airing, Birx said she believes the majority of coronavirus deaths after the initial surge in the United States could have been prevented. In another excerpt, discussed by Gupta and Dana Bash on Sunday's edition of State of the Union, Birx is seen telling Gupta that she knew she was "being watched" during her time in the Trump administration, noting that everyone "was waiting for me to make a misstep." She revealed that an interview she did with Bash over the summer, in which she warned about the severity of the virus, even in seemingly isolated regions of the U.S., particularly angered former President Donald Trump and his team.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.