kyle mcgowan is the cdc's former chief of staff, and the former deputy chief of staff, amanda campbellkyle and amanda, thank you both for being here. the best way i feel like to go through this interview is to pick out certain events that took place over the last year, and i hope you guys can give us some context. the first big moment where there seemed to be some fight between the white house and the cdc was when nancy messonnier, who was the director of the cdc's national center for immunization, essentially, correctly predicted on february 25th that this virus was going to cause a major disruption in life, stock market falls. the result from that is hhs gets sidelined, cdc gets sidelined, mike pence. kyle mcgowan, how significant was that moment? >> well, first off, chuck, i just want to thank you for having the two of us with you today. and i also want to thank all of the dedicated men and women at the cdc who continue to work every day to make sure that we get out of this pandemic as quickly as we possibly can. they are the people who truly make the cdc the world's most premier pu

kyle mcgowan, a former cdc chief of staff, explains "everyone wants to describe the day that the lightflipped and the cdc was sidelined. it didn't happen that way. it was more of like a hand grasping something and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that in the middle of summer it has a complete grasp on everything at the cdc." amanda campbell, the former deputy chief of staff at the cdc, said that political appointees "pressed agency officials to revise, delay, and even scuttle medical report drafts that they thought could be viewed by implication as criticism of president trump." at the same time then health and human services science adviser paul alexander was pushing debunked and dangerous theories about herd immunity for combating the virus. on the 4th of july paul alexander wrote in an e-mail, "there is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups to expose themselves to the virus. period." those efforts by the trump administration to undermine government agencies' response cost lives. joining us now is