After a weekend of criticizing, berating and belittling Dr. Anthony Fauci, the spokeswoman for the Trump White House claimed on Monday that the president still receives Fauci’s views on dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. And that — contrary to all appearances — Fauci hasn’t been sidelined.
But in a Fox News interview, WH press secretary Kayleigh McEnany undercut her own statement by calling Fauci — the nation’s top infectious disease expert — just “one viewpoint” in the coronavirus debate.
“Her remarks came after Fauci said last week that he hasn’t briefed the president in two months and were punctuated by growing evidence of an effort by the White House to cast doubt on Fauci’s credibility and sideline his opinion,” reports The Hill.
Trump sought on Monday to downplay the rift, insisting that he has a “very good relationship” with Fauci, and has had it “right from the beginning.”
Speaking to reporters at the White house, Trump said of Fauci: “I find him to be a very nice person. I don’t always agree with him,” The Hill says. “I get along with him very well. I like him, personally.”
Still, the president’s words do little to blunt the latest White House smear campaign, as indicated by numerous posts on Twitter.
So why, in the midst of a still-fast-growing Covid-19 outbreak that has killed more than 135,000 Americans in a few months and infected well over 3 million, have the president and his top aides been scorning someone with Fauci’s credentials and reputation?
Because he — unlike most others in the Trump administration — dares to publicly disagree with the boss.
For months, Trump has repeatedly, and wrongly, claimed that the virus was nearly exhausted and would soon simply disappear.
So Fauci, no longer welcome in the White House briefing room, has taken to television and other outlets to warn Americans that in fact, “we’re still in a significant problem” with Covid-19.
Predictably, this has enraged Donald Trump.
His aides hastened to give news outlets a bullet-point list of things Fauci said early in the outbreak that they — and Trump — insist were wrong.
Columnist Greg Sargent, writing Monday in the Washington Post, says Trump “was probably thrilled” by the list, which resembled political “opposition research.”
“After all, we’re told, Trump is a ‘counter-puncher,’ and Fauci has made him look bad, so Fauci must be punched back — never mind that Fauci is Trump’s own leading infectious-disease expert amid the most dire public health emergency in modern times,” Sargent writes, suggesting that the whole thing will backfire on the president.
Among other things, White House aides pointed to something Fauci told NBC News in February, when U.S. infections were few and people were still trying to remember the term Covid-19:
Fauci said that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”
“But they omitted a warning Dr. Fauci delivered right after,” notes the New York Times.
“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”
That is, things like wearing masks, washing hands thoroughly, maintaining social distance, and so on. Things that virtually every health expert here and around the world now agree on.
