Schuchat said the White House also denied several agency telebriefings in the spring of 2020 that would have allowed CDC scientists to explain emerging evidence about how the virus moved and infected different populations.Īs CDC scientists continued to try and push out their field reporting on Covid-19, White House officials attempted to morph messaging and at times downplay the significance of the spread of the virus. “We would submit a request to the others to do a briefing and it was declined, and then - or we didn’t get approval to be able to do one,” Schuchat said, referring to specific requests she received from the media for an interview. “The impression that I was given was that the reaction to the morning briefing was quite volatile and having another briefing - you know, later I think I got the impression that having another briefing might get - you know, there was nothing new to report, but get additional voices out there talking about that situation,” Schuchat told the committee in her testimony.įrom that point, the White House took the lead on the federal response and controlling all communications and messaging about the virus, denying CDC requests to hold its own briefings. 25 briefing, the leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services called yet another press conference. “I heard that the President was unhappy with the telebriefing.”įollowing Messonnier’s comments in the Feb. “I believed that my remarks were accurate based on the information we had at the time,” Messonnier told the committee in her interview. That warning frustrated Trump, according to documents released by the congressional committee Friday. and that the disruptions to everyday life could be “severe.” It was one of the first blunt assessments from a high-level CDC official about what was in store for the U.S. In a press conference in February 2020, Messonnier told reporters that she expected community spread within the U.S.
Several former high-level Trump officials who worked on the administration’s response have said publicly after the fact that they did not want to panic the American public.īut scientists at the CDC, well aware that the virus was transmitting at a high rate and could infect easily, stepped in early to speak to the American people directly in an attempt to warn the public about what was coming. The documents released by the committee - and the corresponding interviews with witnesses - lay out a timeline for how the Trump White House began to downplay the dangers posed by Covid-19. Both stepped down from their posts at the CDC in the spring. Former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy Messonnier and former CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat also appeared for questioning.
Several top former Trump officials, including Deborah Birx, the former White House Covid-19 task force coordinator, have answered committee questions.
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment. The documents further underscore how Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection. The emails and transcripts detail how in the early days of 2020 Trump and his allies in the White House blocked media briefings and interviews with CDC officials, attempted to alter public safety guidance normally cleared by the agency and instructed agency officials to destroy evidence that might be construed as political interference.
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