A Medical Faculty Associates doctor who criticized President Donald Trump has been removed from Water Reed National Military Medical Center’s schedule, CBS reported Tuesday.
James Phillips, the chief of disaster medicine at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and an emergency room physician at Walter Reed, will be removed from the hospital’s schedule beginning in January, CBS reported. The move comes about two months after Phillips criticized Trump on Twitter for driving with Secret Service agents to greet his supporters during his COVID-19 hospitalization in October, according to CBS.
“Every single person…in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Phillips tweeted in October. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”
Phillips did not immediately return a request for comment. The tweet has since been taken down, according to CBS.
Walter Reed officials denied that they had removed him from the schedule, and SMHS spokesperson Lisa Anderson told CBS that Phillips remained employed by the MFA but declined to say whether he had been removed from the schedule.
“While we cannot comment on the scheduling assignments of our providers, we can confirm that he continues to be employed at the GW Medical Faculty Associates,” Anderson told CBS.
MFA spokesperson Anne Banner and a Walter Reed spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment.
Lia DeGroot contributed reporting.