Birx reacts to Fauci diaries, calls for better path forward

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky released more than a thousand pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci diary entries ahead of a contentious hearing, reopening scrutiny of the former infectious disease chief’s views on COVID-19 origins and his ties to President Donald Trump. Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator in Trump’s first term, said of the hearing, “We have to have a better way forward than this.”

Birx, who said she worked “in the trenches” with Fauci during the pandemic, used the CBS News segment to argue that the country should be extracting lessons from the pandemic instead of replaying a partisan fight. The released diary pages were described as touching on uncertainty around the origins of COVID-19, the press attention surrounding the pandemic and Fauci’s “unique” relationship with Trump.

In a separate interview on NewsNation’s “Morning in America,” Birx said she was “surprised” by parts of Fauci’s published diary. She pointed to his early concern about asymptomatic spread before government guidance changed, a detail that lands at the center of the public-health question that still haunts the pandemic response: how quickly federal agencies recognized what the virus was doing, and how slowly that understanding reached the public.

Birx brings a long record in outbreak response to the conversation. CBS News transcripts note that she previously helped coordinate the international response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Africa. They also show she has kept returning to the public stage to discuss the Trump White House COVID response, including interviews on “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan on Jan. 24, 2021, Aug. 21, 2022, Nov. 17, 2024 and May 24, 2026.

That history gives Birx unusual standing in the latest round of COVID accountability, where the question is not just what Fauci wrote privately, but whether the country is any closer to clearer rules for preparedness, trust and decision-making when the next public-health emergency arrives.