Doc unloads on Birx's CNN rehabilitation tour: She was the Titanic officer assigned to watch for icebergs

Dr. Jonathan Reiner on Monday lashed out at Dr. Deborah Birx after she "portrayed herself as a victim" in a recent CNN documentary about the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a documentary that aired on Sunday, Birx said that she felt that she couldn't tell the truth about the pandemic after receiving an "uncomfortable" call from former President Donald Trump.

"What really bothered me, frankly, about Dr. Birx is that she portrayed herself a victim," Reiner complained during a Monday appearance on CNN. "She sort of portrayed herself as like an ill-fated passenger on the Titanic when, in fact, she was an officer on the bridge charged with watching out for icebergs."

"This administration sidelined her with Scott Atlas," he continued. "She refused to attend meetings with him but she never said publicly that what he was saying was dangerous and damaging to the pandemic effort. She had opportunities over and over and over again -- as did they all -- to speak out."

CNN host Alisyn Camerota offered a defense of Birx.

"There were times that she tried, there was a time on [CNN's] State of the Union with Dana Bash where she actually told the truth and said it's really bad," Camerota recalled. "And she was completely taken to the woodshed, she says."

"So if you believe that you're in your job and you're doing the best for the country then, you know, it has this completely silencing effect," she added.

But Reiner pushed back.

"The public needed to know from the very beginning how bad this was going to be," he insisted. "When the president was slow-walking testing or telling the country that he wanted to slow the testing down please, no one spoke up. Alright? When the president told Virginia and Michigan to 'liberate' those states, very few people spoke up. When the president hired somebody who believed actually in natural herd immunity, in letting the virus burn through the community -- that was Dr. Atlas -- nobody spoke up. When the president held dozens of mass rallies during the pandemic, no one spoke up."

Watch the video below from CNN.