'Breathtaking' interviews show Trump was 'impervious' to pleas to take pandemic seriously: NYT's Haberman

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Monday described recent CNN interviews with former Trump public health officials as "breathtaking," and said it showed how many of them were frustrated by their inability to get former President Donald Trump to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously.

While appearing on CNN, Haberman said that Dr. Deborah Birx and other former Trump health officials were now speaking freely after being muzzled for much of the past year.

"I think they wanted to peel off the muzzle," she said. "I think it spoke to their frustration about what happened, spoke to their feelings on their own part, could they have done more, was there something else that could have been done... It's breathtaking how quickly this happened."

Haberman was asked why Birx stayed on the job if she felt she wasn't being listened to about a deadly pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans in the last year.

"She believed she could make a difference, that's why she went to the White House," Haberman explained. "I think they all learned, one after the other, that none of them was going to change former President Trump. And I think that because they had never met him previously... they underestimated how impervious he is to efforts to change him."

Watch the video below.