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Trump lashes out at 60 Minutes for letting Rick Bright tell the truth about his virus response

Trump lashes out at 60 Minutes for letting Rick Bright tell the truth about his virus response

On Sunday night, President Trump lashed out at CBS News and their flagship program, 60 Minutes for daring to interview the Trump team’s former vaccine chief Rick Bright and allowing him to tell the nation the truth about the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint after being removed from his position for not embracing the president’s untested quick-fix drug enthusiastically enough, gave damning testimony before the United States Congress last week — and did the same to the nation on Sunday night, telling a terrifying tale of how his warnings were ignored by an administration more intent on downplaying the crisis than actually addressing it.

Add your name to reject Trump & Republicans’ vile idea of sacrificing seniors’ lives to save the stock market!

“Norah O’Donnell: In your complaint, you said that Secretary Azar was intent on downplaying this catastrophic threat. Why would he do that?

Rick Bright: You know, I don’t know why he would do that.

President Trump was also downplaying the threat. He said this at an event in Michigan on January 30.

President Trump at January 30 event: We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment – five.

Rick Bright: Remember, the entire leadership was focused on containment. There was a belief that we could contain this virus and keep it out of the United States. Containment doesn’t work. Containment does buy time. It could slow. It very well could slow the spread. But while you’re slowing the spread, you better be doing something in parallel to be prepared for when that virus breaks out. That was my job.”

The president did not appreciate this and took to Twitter to disparage and demean both Dr. Bright and the whole CBS News team.

Later on Monday morning, a still-seething President Trump trashed the piece as a “hit job” on a “grandstanding Never Trumper.”

We can expect the president’s vitriol and fury to increase exponentially as more and more people come forward and reveal just how badly the Trump administration deliberately exacerbated the coronavirus crisis by ignoring the warnings of health experts and relying on monstrously incompetent people like Jared Kushner to lead the response efforts.

We cannot allow the president to tweet his way out of responsibility for the deaths of nearly 90,000 Americans and the worst unemployment rate in our nation’s history — or get away with smearing the very people who tried to save lives, do their jobs, and follow the science instead of Trump’s selfish delusions.

Read the transcript of Dr. Bright’s interview here.

OD STAFF

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