By Hal Brown, MSW
Updated: Noon Eastern/ 9 AM Pacific
In her interview with Nancy Pelosi on “This Week” my impression was that Martha Raddatz tried to get a stronger condemnation of Dr. Birx than she got, but even hedging her words the Speaker made it very clear she thinks Birx is nothing more than a Trump Covid disinformation enabler.
POLITICO Playbook PM: Behind the scenes: Pelosi trashes Birx.
BEHIND THE SCENES … PELOSI VS. BIRX … During Thursday night’s closed meeting in NANCY PELOSI’S office suite, THE SPEAKER let loose on someone she doesn’t seem to care for: coronavirus task force coordinator DEBORAH BIRX.
-- PELOSI SAID to Treasury Secretary STEVEN MNUCHIN and White House chief of staff MARK MEADOWS: “Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in.” She accused BIRX of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, while praising ANTHONY FAUCI, who she said “came to his senses, and is now a hero.”
-- REFERRING to the special-edition Topps cards of FAUCI, PELOSI added: “They’ve sold more baseball cards of him than anyone in history.”
-- MEADOWS shot back: “That’s because he throws a wicked curveball. He’s really dedicated to no one catching anything.”
Here’s a HuffPost article:
Nancy Pelosi Says She Does Not Have Confidence In Dr. Deborah Birx — The House speaker reportedly called the White House coronavirus task force member “the worst” in a closed-door meeting.
- Raddatz: “Do you have confidence in her?” Raddatz asked.
- Pelosi: “I think [President Donald Trump] is spreading disinformation about the virus and she is his appointee. So I don’t have confidence there, no.”
“She is is appointee” might be translated into she is one of his sycophants. This is an often used term for people bending the truth or outright lying to please Trump. This word, strictly defined, doesn’t fit what I think her motivation is. The word means “a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage.” We never see her in private meetings with Trump so we don’t know if she is obsequious (obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree) with him. I also don't see her as trying to gain advantage. I am hard pressed to see what personal advantage telling Trump what he wants to hear give her.
Perhaps she thinks it enables her to stay on the task force to influence him in the long run. Maybe in the best case I can think of she and Dr. Fauci have plotted this out where she plays good cop to his bad cop.
My job, if I could be said to actually have a job, has been to offer a public mental health assessment of Donald Trump through Daily Kos, and not analyze the people in his orbit. (See my TRUMPOLOGY: The psychological study and analysis of Donald Trump diaries). There is more than enough information about Trump to diagnosis him even without a series of in-depth interviews and administration of a battery of psychological tests.
The HuffPost quotes a NY Times article which called Birx “Pollyannish” which prompted the response below:
My online dictionary defines Pollyanna as follows:
An excessively cheerful or optimistic person: what I am saying makes me sound like some aging Pollyanna who just wants to pretend that all is sweetness and light.
.
I suppose there are worst things than being called Pollyannish in a New York Times article. Perhaps the Pollyanna imagery doesn't set well with a physician who up until recently has been held in high esteem for her accomplishments.
Trying make a yeoman effort to avoid making a psychoanalytic interpretation of Dr. Birx’s behavior with Trump I will simply quote Queen Gertrude from Hamlet:
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
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