Rick Bright is spilling the beans on the inner workings of Donald Trump’s coronavirus pandemic response team.
He says he was reassigned because he wouldn’t buy into Trump’s pitching of a drug he says works “miracles” in getting rid of the COVID-19 virus. Bright happened to be the president’s go-to man on the virus vaccine research effort. Trump has been singing the praises of hydroxychloroquine, contending that it does miraculous work on snuffing out the deadly infectious virus.
Bright wasn’t buying it. He said hydroxychloroquine isn’t sufficiently tested and that its results were spotty at best.
Trump reportedly got rid of him.
The president’s reaction to Bright’s sudden dismissal, though, is utterly priceless. He told reporters this week that he had “never heard” of Rick Bright. Is that for real? How does the president of the United States form a task force, put someone in charge of researching a possible vaccine for a killer disease and not know who he is?
OK, I will venture out on that limb and say that Trump is lying — once again! — about a key virus response aide. Imagine that, if you can.
I have mentioned already on this blog that Donald Trump is the most untrustworthy man ever elected president of the United States. For that matter, he might be the most bald-faced liar ever elected to any office, maybe at any level of government.
Dr. Bright, a well-educated immunologist, isn’t taking his reassignment quietly. He issued a scathing statement that blasts the Health and Human Services Department, saying he was ordered to direct funds toward hydroxychloroquine by those who were close to Trump.
The president isn’t being quite so vocal about hydroxychloroquine these days. Maybe he got the message that his pitching of the drug was putting to many Americans at risk. “What do you have to lose?” he asked during his one of riffs in the White House press room. Well, some reports suggest that patients who take hydroxychloroquine are losing their life.
So now, Dr. Rick Bright is emerging as the latest in a growing list of fall guys who get the axe for, um, telling the truth.