President Trump retweeted a message criticizing health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and Democrats over coronavirus social distancing measures.
The social media offensive against Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a core member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, came after the White House shared an opposition research memo seeking to discredit the top health official.
“So based on Dr. Fauci and the Democrats, I will need an ID card to go shopping but not to vote?” said an April tweet by conservative host Mark Young, who co-hosts a podcast with former game show host Chuck Woolery, that was retweeted by Trump.
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So based on Dr. Fauci and the Democrats, I will need an ID card to go shopping but not to vote?
— Dr. Mark Young (@MarkYoungTruth) April 11, 2020
Trump also shared tweets from Woolery, a conservative and supporter of the president, who said he believes the media, Democrats, doctors, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are all lying about the virus.
“The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it,” Woolery wrote.
The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.
— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) July 13, 2020
The tweetstorm by the president followed a White House official telling CNN over the weekend that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.” Fauci has declined to comment on the news on multiple occasions.
In an interview with FiveThirtyEight released last Thursday, Fauci said he doesn’t believe the United States is properly handling the health crisis, diverging again from the opinion of Trump.
Earlier that week, Fauci warned that the U.S. should not fall into a “false complacency” about coronavirus death rates declining. Speaking at a press conference with Sen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, he also warned citizens against feeling relaxed about the coronavirus even though death rates have fallen.
“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” he said then. “There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. Don’t get yourself into a false complacency.”
There are more than 12.9 million reported cases of the coronavirus across the globe, with more than 569,000 deaths. In the U.S., more than 3.3 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus, with the nation’s death toll totaling more than 135,000. More than 40 million people in the U.S. have been tested for COVID-19, according to the latest reading of the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
