Coronavirus task force leader Dr. Deborah Birx announced Wednesday she plans to retire after president-elect Joe Biden takes office.
“I hope I was helpful, I will be helpful in any role that people think I can be helpful in and then I will retire,” she said, breaking the news in an interview with Newsy.
Birx said the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing lockdowns took a big toll on her family.
“My parents stopped eating and drinking because they were so depressed,” she said. “This is what’s happening in households across America.”
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reacted to the news on Twitter.
President Donald Trump has great respect for Dr. Birx and likes her very much,” she wrote. “We wish her well!”
Vice President Mike Pence’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Birx announced her plans after the Associated Press reported she traveled with family members to a vacation home in Delaware after Thanksgiving.
The Centers for Disease Control had advised Americans not to travel or mix with those outside their own household.
Details of the trip were brought forward by Kathleen Flynn, whose brother is married to Birx’s daughter “out of concern for her own parents,” according to the Associated Press
“She cavalierly violated her own guidance,” Flynn said.
Birx defended her trip in a statement as “solely focused on preparing the property for a potential sale” and said that members of her family assisted her in the task.
She expressed her disappointment at the toll that her position put on the family.
“I think what was done in the last week to my family — you know, they didn’t choose this for me,” Birx said. “They’ve tried to be supportive, but to drag my family into this when it’s — my daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months. My parents have been isolated for 10 months.”
Birx was savaged by the left for not being a strong public “truth teller” to the president about the virus.
The media and the left instead raised Dr. Anthony Fauci as a folk hero despite a record of contradictory and alarmist statements about the virus.
Axios reported in May that Birx played a significant role behind the scenes in convincing the president to extend the social distancing guidelines to 30 days after an initial two week period.
Trump ultimately sidelined Birx after the lockdowns, choosing instead to publicly focus on reopening the country to save the American economy as the election approached.
Birx warned in a White House memo before the election that the United States was “entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic” even as Trump repeated on the campaign trail that the country was “rounding the corner” on beating the virus.