Coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright testified in Congress Thursday, warning that the outbreak will “get worse and be prolonged” if the Trump administration doesn’t get its act together on testing and vaccines. Bright says he was first sidelined for pushing for increased supplies of personal protective equipment and then removed from his job heading an agency working on vaccine development because he pushed back against Donald Trump’s promotion of unproven treatments for COVID-19.
Multiple Republicans on the committee used their time questioning Bright to promote that very same drug, hydroxychloroquine, even though there continues to be much more evidence that it’s unsafe than that it helps COVID-19 patients. Other Republicans elected to attack Bright, from Rep. Markwayne Mullin going after Bright during the hearing for taking medical leave for hypertension to a line-up of administration officials and Donald Trump himself savaging him from afar.
“He looks like an angry disgruntled employee who, frankly, according to some people, didn’t do a very good job,” said Trump.
“Everything he’s complaining about was achieved. Everything he talked about was done,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar insisted. “Every single thing.” Except for the part where Bright told about issuing early warnings that the U.S. needed to stock up on PPE, and we all know how that went. And where Bright discussed, during his testimony, the lack of adequate testing to fight the spread of the virus now. And warned that a vaccine is extremely unlikely to be ready on the timeline Trump keeps promising, and will be in short supply when it is ready for general use.
Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro went on Fox News and described Bright as “not just a disgruntled employee, in my judgment. He is a deserter in the war on the China virus.” (Hi there, racist!)
Given how Republicans pulled out the stops to attack and discredit Bright, it sure looks like they think his warnings and record are credible.