Scott Atlas, President Trump’s controversial special adviser on the coronavirus, has resigned from his post.
A White House official confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Atlas, who joined the Trump administration in August, submitted his resignation to the president on Monday, as was first reported by Fox News. Atlas was designated as a special government employee with a 130-day detail. His position was set to expire next week.
“I worked hard with a singular focus — to save lives and help Americans through this pandemic,” Atlas wrote in his resignation letter, adding he “always relied on the latest science and evidence, without any political consideration or influence.”
Atlas posted a copy of his resignation letter, dated Tuesday, to Twitter shortly after the story broke.
Honored to have served @realDonaldTrump and the American people during these difficult times. pic.twitter.com/xT1hRoYBMh
— Scott W. Atlas (@ScottWAtlas) December 1, 2020
During his tenure, Atlas drew both praise and condemnation for his explicit support of economic reopenings during the pandemic. He wrote in his letter that lockdowns are “extremely harmful” to U.S. citizens. He also praised the Trump administration for supporting the reopening of schools and assisting nursing home communities, adding that lockdowns “identified and illuminated early on the harms of prolonged lockdowns, including that they create massive physical health losses and psychological distress, destroy families and damage our children.”
“As time went on, like all scientists and health policy scholars, I learned new information and synthesized the latest data from around the world, all in an effort to provide you with the best information to serve the greater public good,” Atlas added. “But, perhaps more than anything, my advice was always focused on minimizing all the harms from both the pandemic and the structural policies themselves, especially to the working class and the poor.”
Before becoming the president’s adviser, Atlas was a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution. In a letter, dozens of his former colleagues said they have “a moral and ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered by Dr. Scott Atlas.”
He also quibbled with President-elect Joe Biden during the 2020 election campaign after the Democrat claimed “no serious doc around the world” was in favor of loosening coronavirus restrictions. “Ummm … tell that to the 11,000+ (so far) epidemiologists and ID scientists from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford etc. who aligned with this. Boy, those Flat Earthers sure don’t give up,” Atlas responded in a tweet.
