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.
"I got called by the president," Birx said, adding that the conversation was "very uncomfortable, very direct, and very difficult to hear." Gupta then asked Birx if she was "threatened," to which she replied only by reiterating that "it was a very uncomfortable conversation." Tim O'Donnell