Finally top Trump official speaks out

The co-ordinator of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response made a shocking revelation during a recent CNN interview – many of the 550,000 Americans lives lost to the pandemic could have been saved with better leadership. ‘‘I look at it this way,’’ Dr Deborah Birx, a renowned HIV researcher and diplomat, told CNN, ‘‘The first time we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original (coronavirus) surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.’’

Why is she telling us now? And why did Birx persist in her high post while she knew of so much needless death?

Similar questions might be asked of other health officials under Trump who also griped to CNN. Among them Robert Redfield, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Stephen Hahn, former chief of the Food and Drug Administration; and Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But Birx’s remarks were the most damning, particularly from someone who was the public face of the government’s response during weeks of White House briefings, and who at times praised Trump’s leadership. In any administration there’s tension between non-political advisers and presidents with wrong-headed views. But when you have a front row seat to deaths you know could be avoided and don’t raise the alarm publicly, that’s your responsibility. Birx owed the nation her honest opinion of how Trump was failing and costing thousands of Americans their lives.