President Trump said he ignored the advice of the top medical expert in his administration as the White House works to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
“You know, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci said, ‘Don’t wear masks,’ and now he says, ‘Wear them,'” Trump said during an interview with Greta Van Susteren, which is set to air on GrayTV this weekend.
Excerpts of the conversation have been published by CBS News and the Guardian.
Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease doctor, has on more than one occasion since the pandemic began broken publicly with Trump on how the federal government should handle the outbreak.
As the United States recorded its 3 millionth case of the coronavirus this week, Trump celebrated the low mortality rate of the disease. Just over 132,000 people in the U.S. have died after contracting the virus.
“Why does the Lamestream Fake News Media REFUSE to say that China Virus deaths are down 39%, and that we now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World,” Trump tweeted on July 6. “They just can’t stand that we are doing so well for our Country!”
Fauci warned America is still “knee deep” in the first wave of the pandemic and is likely to see a second wave in the fall, and he urged that states facing increased coronavirus cases “should seriously look at shutting down.”
“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” Fauci said. “There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus, don’t get yourself into false complacency.”
Trump said he disagrees.
“We’ve done a good job,” Trump said during the interview. “I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks, by the time we next speak, I think we’re going to be in very good shape.”
Trump has taken credit for “saving thousands of lives” by “acting early” during the pandemic’s early days. In January, he banned travel to the U.S. by foreign nationals from China, where the virus originated.
“And you know, he’s said numerous things: ‘Don’t close off China. Don’t ban China.’ And I did it anyway,” Trump said of Fauci. “I sort of didn’t listen to my experts, and I banned China.”
Back in April, Fauci downplayed any conflict between he and the president after he was absent from a White House coronavirus task force briefing, a daily occurrence during the pandemic’s early days.
“The president has listened to what I have said and to what the other people on the task force have said. When I have made recommendations, he has taken them. He’s never countered or overridden me. The idea of just pitting one against the other is just not helpful,” Fauci said at the time. “I wish that would stop, and we’d look ahead at the challenge. We have to pull together to get over this thing.”
On a separate issue, the president also indicated he is open to changing the location of the Republican National Convention, which is slated to take place in late August in Jacksonville, Florida. The state has seen a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
“We’re very flexible,” Trump said. “We can do a lot of things.”
The two have also been at odds over the use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to treat patients with the coronavirus.
The president has advocated for the use of the drug, revealing in May that he also took it as a preventative measure against the virus, while Fauci said patients who take the drug would likely have “adverse events with regard to cardiovascular.”
“The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for it,” Fauci said of the drug in May.
A study on hydroxychloroquine released in July found that coronavirus patients who took the drug were less likely to die.
“In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality,” the study’s authors wrote.
