Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator under President Trump, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, joined CNN along with four other doctors to speak candidly about their experience serving under the Trump administration at the height of the pandemic.
The pair, who worked closely with one another during the HIV epidemic, drew on that collective experience when working with Trump.
"It was very difficult being just one person in the White House," Birx said about working under Trump. "I underestimated the White House and the politics."
Fauci described what became known as "the doctors’ group," which consisted mainly of the pair and Dr. Robert Redfield, the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr. Stephen Hahn, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Brett Giroir, the former coronavirus testing czar under Trump, and Dr. Jerome Adams, the former surgeon general. Of all four of them, Fauci said Birx "had a much more difficult situation, she had an office right there in the West Wing."
"Boy, she did a lot of good," Fauci added. "She knocked herself out getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning, putting that data together, presenting it every day."
More on Birx: In late January, Birx said she "always" considered quitting Trump's White House coronavirus task force and was troubled by colleagues' perceptions that she had become political, she told CBS in a clip from an interview in January.
"I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that, um, every day?" Birx said.
"Colleagues of mine that I had known for decades — decades — in that one experience, because I was in the White House, decided that I had become this political person, even though they had known me forever," she said. "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."
When asked whether she had ever considered quitting, she replied, "Always."
Watch the exchange:
