Former President Donald Trump took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, claiming the nation’s top infectious disease expert is a “great promoter” but not a “great doctor.”
“The media, the Democrats, and the so-called experts are now finally admitting what I first said 13 months ago. The evidence demonstrates that the virus originated in a Chinese government lab. Couldn’t say it,” Trump said during a speech during North Carolina’s GOP convention. “You couldn’t say it. And Dr. Fauci, who I actually got along with, he’s a nice guy, he’s a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he’s a hell of a promoter. He likes television more than any politician in this room, and they like television.”
Former President Donald Trump criticizes Dr. Fauci for his dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis.
“He’s a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he’s a hell of a promoter. He likes television more than any politician in this room… But he’s been wrong on almost every issue.” pic.twitter.com/Y6NbIyaZik
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 6, 2021
Trump then took aim at Fauci’s record on the pandemic, saying the doctor has been “wrong on almost every issue.”
“But he’s been wrong on almost every issue, and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also. Very wrong,” Trump said of Fauci. “We ended the payments. They were started in 2014, and then I can tell you Mark Meadows came in, and I talked to him, and he saw what I saw. And I said, ‘What the hell’s going on? When did that start?’ It started in 2014, and we ended it, our administration ended it.”
Trump contrasted Fauci with his own record on the virus, boasting that his decision to close the border from China helped save lives even though Fauci advised against the move.
“But generally speaking, I went the opposite way of Dr. Fauci, what he was saying. For instance, Fauci said, ‘Do not close our borders to China or Europe,’ but I did it anyway. And months later, he said I made the right decision and saved thousands and thousands of lives. He said it was the right decision, but he did not want to close that border,” Trump said. “We closed it, and I think we saved hundreds of thousands of lives. You remember the number? It was 2.2 million people in our country who were expected to die.”
Trump also ridiculed Fauci’s apparent lack of consistency on the question of face masks, pointing out that the doctor was initially against face coverings.
“Fauci said powerfully at the beginning no masks. You remember that? ‘No, masks don’t work. Masks don’t.’ Then he went into masks, and then he became a radical masker. I recall him … ‘If you have three, if you have four. Get a pair of goggles, also, ideally. And let’s wear them for another five or six years,’” Trump quipped.
The former president then returned his attention to China, alleging that Fauci denied the possibility that the virus could have originated in a Wuhan lab.
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“But Fauci has, perhaps, never been more wrong than when he denied the virus and where it came from,” Trump said. “The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China. We should all declare within one unified voice that China must pay. They must pay.”
