Dr. Deborah Birx on Donald Trump’s ‘disinfectant’ moment: ‘I still think about it every day’

Former White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said Monday she still thinks “every day” about the moment last year when former President Donald Trump suggested during a press conference that injecting disinfectant into the body could possibly treat COVID-19.

“That moment, obviously, there’s a lot of tape on that and you could see how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was,” Dr. Birx told ABC News host Terry Moran.

The former Army physician said that in the military, “there are discussions you have in private with your commanding officers” and there are discussions you have in public and that Mr. Trump made the mistake of having that discussion in front of the world.

“Frankly, I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” she recalled of the April 23 press briefing. “I still think about it every day.”

“When I was spoken to, I said, ’Not a treatment,’ ” she continued. “I guess some people thought I should run up onstage and interrupt this dialogue that was going on between the DHS scientists and the president, but I was just not trained in my years of training to react that way. I think maybe if someone who didn’t have the military training that I had then maybe they would have reacted differently.

“And it’s something Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and I talked about all the time, is how to correct the record,” she added. “I can’t tell you how many discussions we had on, how do we get the message out realizing what’s happening at the most senior levels of the White House.”

Mr. Trump sparked an uproar during the April briefing after he floated treatment ideas to Department of Homeland Security officials, including using ultraviolet light inside the body or injecting disinfectant to fight COVID-19. Dr. Birx at the time defended the then-president’s comments as “musing.”

On Monday, she said she’s grateful the Biden administration appears to be on the same page when it comes to coronavirus messaging.

“I’ve really been gratified and happy, I’ll be honest, as a public health official and as someone who’s worked globally, with having leadership consistently messaging,” she said. “Whether it’s the CDC director, or Dr. Fauci, or President Biden or Vice President Harris — all of them and all of their spokespeople are communicating exactly the same pieces.”