Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being a “Hillary Clinton sympathizer” who is attempting to undermine President Trump.
“Jonathan Karl yesterday brought in a China-sympathetic reporter to that press briefing. That China reporter in there from Phoenix TV — that’s a Chinese dominated company — Jonathan Karl of ABC runs the White House Correspondents’ Association, so he brought the reporter in there,” Limbaugh said on his program Tuesday. “And I don’t know if anybody noticed it, but little Dr. Fauci at the end of the briefing gave Karl a thumbs-up like a ‘job well done’ kind of thing.”
“We got all of these Hillary Clinton sympathizers still on the medical expert team here. And we know that one thing has not changed, and that is these people’s desire above everything else to get rid of Donald Trump,” Limbaugh continued.
The pro-Trump radio personality was making reference to a video clip from a recent White House Press Briefing showing Fauci acknowledging Karl as he and other members of the Coronavirus Task Force left the briefing room.
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During the briefing, Trump shamed a reporter from a Chinese media company after she asked him if he was “cooperating” with China to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
“Who are you working for, China?” Trump asked during Monday’s White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. “Do you work for China? Or are you with a newspaper? Who are you with?”
Limbaugh, a personal friend of Trump who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his State of the Union address this year, suggested the White House Correspondents’ Association welcoming of a reporter for foreign press proves they are out to get the president.
“I’m just telling you that there is an all-out, subtle effort for the status quo because it’s going to hurt Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said. “That is the objective. That’s the only thing at the forefront of some of these people’s minds while they portray themselves as being primarily concerned with public health.”
Fauci has denied any reports of a rift between him and Trump and says when he speaks to the nation, he does so from a purely scientific standpoint.
Trump, Fauci once explained, is trying to give a message of hope.
“I think there’s this issue of trying to separate the two of us,” Fauci said last month. “There isn’t fundamentally a difference there. He’s coming to it from a hope, layperson standpoint. I’m coming from it from a scientific standpoint.”
Jonathan Karl, a veteran journalist and, head of the association, this week said Trump’s personal attacks on him and other members of the press do not bother him.
“He can insult me all he wants. I don’t care,” Karl said this week. “What matters is getting to the bottom of what is happening with the federal response and how people should be responding to this crisis.”
