Former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx 'wanted Donald Trump to lose presidential election,' new book by virus adviser to Joe Biden claims

One of the top advisers to during the pandemic has suggested that she wanted him to lose the , according to a new book.

Dr Deborah Birx dropped the hint at a meeting with officials in August 2020 according to Andy Slavitt, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

In a new book, Preventable, written by Slavitt, he recounts asking Dr Birx if she would want to continue her service should  win the election.  

'At one point, after a brief pause, she looked me in the eye and said, 'I hope the election turns out a certain way,'' Slavitt wrote. 'I had the most important information I needed.'

When the pandemic begun, Birx together with Dr Anthony Fauci were two of President Trump's move visible advisers, regularly speaking alongside one another.  

As the White House Coronavirus response coordinator, Birx was present at the press conference during which the president suggested people should inject themselves with disinfectant as a possible COVID treatment

Close-up video of Birx's reaction went viral online, with many social media users setting her reactions to music from comedy shows. 

Birx smirked briefly and looked down as dejection set in. 

But by the summer of 2020, things began to unravel having fallen out of favor with Trump, who initially considered her 'classy' and 'a lady,' according to White House sources. 

In August the president replaced her with Dr Scott Atlas, a radiologist who had no epidemiological experience, but whom Trump had seen speak on Fox News.  

'Fighting the virus and Scott Atlas together is the hardest thing I've had to do,' Dr Birx is reported to have said at the Minnesota meeting.

Birx told Slavitt she had been 'completely silenced' by Trump and barred from appearing on any national news media.

'Her early optimism was long gone,' Slavitt writes.

Having been barred from using her national platform, Birx decided to tour the country to give detailed Covid data to local officials in person.

It was during one such meeting she met with Slavitt, who for the last six months, has served as Biden's senior adviser on the Covid-19 response before stepping down on Thursday.

'I wanted to get a sense for whether, in the event of a strained transition of government, she would help give Biden and his team the best chance to be effective,' Slavitt writes in the book, seen by

During one news conference, Birx had praised Trump saying he had been 'so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data' and that his 'ability to analyze and integrate data' came from 'his long history in business.'

But Birx's outlook went from bad to worse at the year continued to progress.

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In August, Trump called Birx 'pathetic' when she warned Americans that the pandemic is 'extraordinarily widespread' in the US. 

'At the end of October 2020, she was beyond all of that; she was downright scared,' Slavitt notes.

Although she considered quitting her White House job many times, Birx finally retired from her government post on 20 January, when Mr Biden took office. 

'I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that every day?' she told  

'I had to ask myself every morning, is there something that I think I can do that would be helpful in responding to this pandemic and it's something I asked myself every night.'

Birx's departure from government came after she faced criticism for ignoring her own public advice and traveling out of state to visit family over the Thanksgiving weekend. 

It was reported that she traveled out of state for the holiday even as she and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were urging Americans to forgo holiday travel.

Birx was widely branded a hypocrite for the Black Friday trip, where she was accompanied by her husband Paige Reffe, one of her daughters, a son-in-law and two grandchildren. 

She lamented that the scrutiny has been very hard on her and her family, who have been struggling just like everyone else during the pandemic. 

She insisted the purpose of the roughly 50-hour visit to Fenwick Island was to deal with the winterization of a property before a potential sale - something she says she previously hadn't had time to do because of her busy schedule. 

Birx came to the White House coronavirus task force with a sterling reputation. 

A public servant since the Reagan administration, Birx has served as a US Army physician and a globally recognized AIDS researcher. 

She was pulled away from her ambassadorial post as the US global AIDS coordinator to help the task force in late February 2020.

Birx, however, has faced criticism from public health experts and Democratic lawmakers for not speaking out forcefully against Trump when he contradicted advice from medical advisers and scientists about how to fight the virus.

She stayed in Trump's good graces far longer than Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who frequently contradicted Trump.  

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