The villain of this piece is Birx (aside from Trump, of course). All such pieces are a bit "Woodward journalism." Basically if you talk to the reporter you are less likely to portrayed as a villain. I don't mean this in an extortion sense (though it can be that), but in the sense that if you talk you get your side told, if you don't talk then it doesn't.
That aside, throughout the all of this there has been a tendency for people to want/hope that Birx was Actually Good. Some of this is just generally hoping that the people around Trump are staying in it because they hope they can do a small bit of good, instead of just being incompetent evil shits like he is. But there's also the common belief that women can't be as bad as the men, and of course both men and women exploit this fact, often with the help of credulous PR agents acting as journalists (Haberman doing years of PR work for Hope Hicks (still!) and Ivanka (not as much, or at least not as obviously)).
Sometimes women are just bad, too.
