STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

Trump Freezes Out Fauci, but Loves Birx’s Scarves

The president said Wednesday that he loved how Birx “can take a scarf and do 15 things with it.”

President Donald Trump praised Dr. Deborah Birx for her work on HIV/AIDS prevention and her signature scarves in a Wednesday interview but notably skipped over her work on the coronavirus pandemic. “An unbelievable woman. A woman of tremendous substance. And style, frankly. She has an amazing style. She walks into the room and she can take a scarf and do 15 things with it,” he told Fox News of the chief medical officer on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force. By contrast, his administration and key allies have appeared to largely sideline Dr. Anthony Fauci—a member of the task force and the head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases—even putting together a memo titled “Dr. Wrong” on his incorrect predictions about the virus.