A source close to Azar disputed that characterization and frustration with Gottlieb, and the idea Azar that has been sidelined.
Gottlieb was seen at the White House ahead of Trump’s emergency declaration on the coronavirus pandemic, according to a source, and he later praised Trump’s Rose Garden event.
Gottlieb declined to comment for this story.
He now divides his time between a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute, serving on a handful of drug company boards and a career as a talking head who has the rare ability to explain complicated science in a way ordinary people can understand. Some of that has been to the administration’s adversaries on Capitol Hill.
The libertarian doctor’s activist agenda as FDA chief, on everything from e-cigarettes to nutrition, often put him at odds with the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory approach. But Gottlieb sold his proposals well — and left the administration on rare good footing with the White House and lawmakers from both parties in Congress.
“You do have big shoes to fill,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) told Hahn, Gottlieb’s successor, at a House hearing Wednesday where Democrats grilled him on the flawed White House response to the coronavirus. Just one day earlier, Gottlieb gave his take on the state of the outbreak to Pocan and the rest of the Congressional Progressive Caucus at their invitation.
“We don’t have a whole lot of, honestly, Trump appointees, American Enterprise Institute employees, come by to brief the Progressive Caucus. But he got it because we respect him so much,” Pocan told Hahn.
Meanwhile, HHS has said it doesn’t know how many tests have been done, and the CDC has dropped its own count from its website. Instead, the administration has been updating how many tests have been shipped to labs, not how fast the troubled testing program can turn them around. Azar said the CDC is working to get its own testing tracker up.
Gottlieb also has stepped into a void around Hahn, who has kept a low profile throughout the crisis — posting relatively few coronavirus tweets, making no appearances on prime-time TV programs, and waiting a month before the White House even added him to its coronavirus task force.
And when asked about the testing numbers his predecessor is projecting, Hahn said it’s complicated. “I would want to get you the most accurate information possible,” he told lawmakers.
Hahn, a cancer doctor and health system administrator, is constrained in ways that Gottlieb is not, allies argue. Two administration officials said that early testing delays were rooted in Azar’s decision early on to leave Hahn off the coronavirus task force, where he could have coordinated more easily with CDC Director Robert Redfield to let private labs roll out their own tests.
“He wasn’t given the opportunity to be involved and that’s what created the problems,” said one administration official. Hahn was eventually brought on the task force, along with Surgeon General Jerome Adams and CMS Administrator Seema Verma, after Vice President Mike Pence was tapped to take the lead.
An HHS spokesperson said Hahn has been involved in briefing Azar and others from the very beginning and Azar is pleased he is part of the task force.
“We are and have been focused on addressing this public health emergency, and not who was appointed to the task force or when,” Hahn said in a statement to POLITICO.
Yet what looked like early stumbles and confusion among administration officials has driven frustration among lawmakers — and now they are turning to Gottlieb.
“I just feel that there’s been such confusion and miscommunication at the presidential level that we’re constantly playing catch-up,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) whose state has reported at least nine cases of coronavirus.
“Even though he’s on the conservative side, you know the ideas that he’s pushing forward are important and they’ve been smart,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who attended Gottlieb’s closed-door briefing with progressive members and whose state has become the U.S. epicenter of the outbreak.
“His deep-seated interest in public health issues is genuine, it’s who he was before. It’s just getting more attention, it’s magnified now,” said a former HHS official. “What’s the long game? He’s going to keep writing op-eds.”
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
Source: politico.com
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