Former President Donald Trump launched an angry attack on Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, describing the former members of his COVID-19 task force as “self promoters” with “bad instincts” after they criticized his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a TV documentary.
He accused them of “reinventing history” to cover up their own “faulty recommendations.”
Birx, who coordinated the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, told a CNN special report that hundreds of thousands of lives should have been saved.
And Fauci said he had been shocked by the way Trump had called on states to reopen last year even as doctors were urging people to stay home.
Trump responded on Monday evening with a 587-word statement in which he accused Birx of being a hypocrite for traveling to see family at Thanksgiving.
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“Dr. Birx is a proven liar with very little credibility left,” he said. “Many of her recommendations were viewed as ‘pseudo-science,’ and Dr. Fauci would always talk negatively about her and, in fact, would ask not to be in the same room with her.”
During the interview, Birx said the death toll should have been much lower once an initial surge had subsided.
“There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,”she said. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
The special report was broadcast on Sunday, picking over the handling of the crisis with interviews of some of the key White House players.
Six officials — Dr. Brett Giroir, Dr. Stephen Hahn, Dr. Robert Kadlec, and Dr. Robert Redfield, as well as Birx and Fauci — painted a damning picture of strained relationships, mixed messaging, and information withheld from the public.
The politicization of the crisis even led to all the doctors receiving death threats, according to Birx.
But Trump shrugged off the criticisms and used his statement to trumpet his role in developing vaccines.
And he accused Fauci of giving a “fake interview.”
“Dr. Fauci is also the king of ‘flip-flops’ and moving the goalposts to make himself look as good as possible. He fought me so hard because he wanted to keep our country open to countries like China. I closed it against his strong recommendation, which saved many lives.
Trump allies blasted the former president’s medical and scientific advisers for trying to protect their own reputations.
The special report was broadcast on Sunday, and Trump allies blasted the former president’s medical and scientific advisers for trying to protect their own reputations.
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Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows accused Birx and Fauci of delivering “revisionist” and “disingenuous” accounts.
“What we heard last night on CNN was rhetoric we never heard in the West Wing from Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx,” he told Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, on his War Room podcast.
