Kayleigh McEnany blasts Dr. Bright comments on pandemic: He hasn’t been paying attention at all
Vaccine expert Dr. Rick Bright testifies in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saying ‘pandemic playbook has been ignored;’ White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reacts.
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White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday reacted to ousted Trump administration scientist Rick Bright's claim that the president was “dismissive” of a warning about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak.
“It sounds like Mr. Bright hasn’t really been paying that much attention at all,” McEnany told “America’s Newsroom.”
Bright, the former HHS official who filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was removed from his post for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus, said Thursday that officials at the Department of Health and Human Services were “dismissive” of his warning about the contagion and said that if the government doesn’t follow his guidance “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history.”
Speaking before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee, Bright criticized HHS leadership for their response to the pandemic. He claimed that he was relegated to a lower position because he disagreed with the Trump administration’s push to tout “drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”
“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest funding allocated to BARDA [the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright wrote in his testimony.
He added: “HHS leadership was dismissive about my dire predictions about what I assumed would be a broader outbreak and the pressing need to act, and were therefore unwilling to act with the urgency that the situation required.”
McEnany responded, “When he talks about the pandemic playbook, we actually put into place a pandemic preparedness document with recommendations long before the pandemic ever came. It sounds like he hasn’t been paying attention when he suggests that Americans should social distance and wash their hands."
"These are all things we’ve said a million times, probably at this point when you count everyone in the White House who has been saying it," she continued.
McEnany also claimed that the Trump administration built a stockpile of equipment, delivering “millions” of respirators, “billions” of gloves, and many more pieces of personal protective equipment to hospitals. McEnany explained further that Trump heeded guidance from White House Task Force members Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.
“It sounds like this is someone who is reacting and making suggestions that have long been into play,” McEnany said.
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McEnany said that Trump wants states to reopen their economy and that the country is prepared to deal with another spike in coronavirus cases that is projected to come in the fall.
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“Where we are now is at a place where cases are coming down, mortality is coming down. We’re looking forward to the fall. No one knows what we’ll face in the fall. But what we do know is this: we are prepared for this,” she said.
"We have testing available to do strategic testing. We have a stockpile. We have 100,000 ventilators that were produced in 100 days or are being produced. We’re ready for what lies ahead, but we’re at a place where we can reopen in this country at this very moment.”
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