The White House is seeking to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, as Trump works to marginalize him and his dire warnings about the shortcomings of the U.S. coronavirus response.
In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official said Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.” The official gave NBC News a list of nearly a dozen past comments by Fauci that the official said had ultimately proven erroneous.
During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci’s assessment that the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly: “I disagree with him.”
The List:
- January: Fauci claimed the virus was not a major threat.
- His early doubt that people with no symptoms could play a significant role in spreading the virus.
- Fauci early February: “At this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.
- March: “People should not wear masks.”
- ***Fauci made this comment because he feared a “shortage of masks and wanted to reserve them for health care workers. And he has said from the start that scientists’ knowledge of a brand new virus would evolve and recommendations could change based on new information.”
Since the early days of the virus, we now know more about it than we did then.
Dr. Fauci now:
- Fauci disputes Trump’s claim that the U.S. is “doing great.”
- He faults some states for opening too soon and ignoring “the task force’s suggested criteria for when it’s safe to loosen restrictions.”
- Fauci has claimed that if the US reaches 100K confirmed cases of the virus, it would not surprise him.
- Dr. Fauci has expressed concerns about reopening the schools something that both Trump and Betsy DeVos want and have threatened to cut off funding to our schools if they don’t open up. They have no legal authority to do so.
- He has called on state and local official to mandate wearing masks in public.
Because Dr. Fauci has challenged Trump’s false and dangerous narrative regarding the virus, the administration has essentially sidelined him. He no longer appears at the ‘Task Force” public briefings; he hasn’t been seen in the White House for a few months; no major news network have interviewed him as of late. He basically does podcasts, participates in social media forums, etc.
Trump is also bigly upset that Dr. Fauci has better ‘ratings’ than him:
A New York Times/Sienna College poll last month found that 2 in 3 registered voters approved of Fauci, including half of Republicans and 4 in 5 Democrats. Trump, by comparison, enjoyed support of his handling of the crisis from only 1 in 4 voters in the same poll, including just 4 percent of Democrats.
And then there’s Trump retweeting nonsense from a has been, game show host as opposed to a CREDIBLE scientist:
