The NYT story about Bright was not structured as a story, it was more like a gossip item, forthrightly saying the whole item was “he claims.” Ppl still read it as something other than it was, which is not NYT fault. What was it exactly? It should’ve been obvious:

The demented tone of his comments and the presence of the lawyers who came after Kavanaugh gave the game away: Bright lost an internal power struggle that well preceded any of this and he wanted to have his framing be the first version. Thus the NYT press release. But:

News moves fast now and reporters dove in immediately. They were bound to quickly find that it wasn’t about this drug at all, but merely a convenient framing that would be catnip to media. You got the sense he might be playing both sides. Enter Politico: https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/04/22/hhs-ousts-vaccine-expert-as-covid-19-threat-grows-201642?__twitter_impression=true

Indeed, those emails suggest it might—might—be the case that internally he was *backing* the president’s move.

Likely explanation is that the drug excuse wasn’t even Bright’s idea, but he went along with it. Welcome to Washington! However:

All those high profile mainstream academic types had already tweeted some version of “THIS IS THE SOVIET UNION” so his lawyers did succeed, arguably, in writing the first draft.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Final note: excellent work by Politico to get the full story out so quickly. And their speed shows how long this drama has been simmering behind the scenes, reporters and bureaucrats alike waiting for its denouement.

Sorry, one addendum, because this is twitter: None of this means Bright *deserved* to be transferred or that he was wrong in the internal dispute. He might still be ultimately the wronged party here! But we should know what this fight is *not* about--and now we know.