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President Trump on Thursday defended the use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus and slammed the demoted government scientist who filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was removed from his post for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s response to the contagion.

Making his comments before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Pennsylvania, Trump said that there was a “tremendous response” to hydroxychloroquine and called Rick Bright -- the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority – a “disgruntled person.”

“To me, he is nothing more than a really unhappy disgruntled person,” Trump said, noting that he had watched some of Bright’s testimony on Thursday before Congress.

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Bright testified that the pandemic will only get worse without a proper plan and blamed the Trump administration for not taking his warnings seriously.

“Our population is being paralyzed by fear stemming from a lack of a coordinated response and a dearth of accurate, clear communication about the path forward,” Bright told lawmakers, before offering a grim prediction for what could happen if proper steps are not taken now.

“Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history,” Bright warned. In his prepared written statement, he said the coronavirus pandemic “has the potential to eclipse the devastation wrought by the 1918 influenza which globally claimed over 50 million lives,” referring not just to illnesses, but the economic and societal impacts as well.

Bright’s testimony follows this week’s warning by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that a rushed re-opening of stores and lifting stay-at-home restrictions could “turn back the clock,” seeding more suffering and death and complicating efforts to get the economy rolling again.

Bright criticized HHS leadership for their response to the pandemic and 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.”

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“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 said in his written testimony.

As for hydroxychloroquine, an analysis of the use of the drug to treat COVID-19 patients in U.S. veterans’ hospitals found no benefit to using the drug and that there were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care.

The nationwide study, which was released last month, was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19.

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.