Former Trump health adviser Deborah Birx to publish memoir

Deborah Birx, a former public health adviser to former President Trump who rose to prominence in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, is releasing a memoir this spring that will provide an account of her time inside the Trump White House as the administration’s coronavirus coordinator.

Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Monday that it will publish “Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of The Trump Administration, COVID-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late” on April 26.

“I wrote ‘Silent Invasion’ to document the full extent of what I witnessed as I tried to save lives during this devastating time,” Birx said in a statement. “In the book, I expose the true cost of mistakes that were made at all levels of the federal government, but I also clarify the things that went right yet remained largely unseen—the insights and innovations that saved American lives in this pandemic and are essential to preparing for the next.”

Birx was one of Trump’s top health advisers and is currently a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. Prior to her time in the Trump administration, she worked in public health across multiple administrations for more than 40 years. 

Since leaving the Trump administration, she has expressed regret for how she handled her role as head of the White House coronavirus task force and has accused former administration officials of censoring her warnings about the severity of the pandemic.

Birx has also testified behind closed doors as part of a House subcommittee investigation into the Trump administration’s pandemic response. Birx said Trump’s resistance to promoting basic public health mitigation resulted in more than 100,000 avoidable deaths. 

Birx said she advocated for a stronger response to the pandemic but was repeatedly undermined by Trump’s COVID-19 adviser Scott Atlas.

Birx has drawn criticism for praising Trump’s understanding of the data on the pandemic as well as her failure to push back when Trump made false claims about people injecting disinfectant as a means to treat the virus.