Dr. Anthony Fauci’s ouster could drive “mass resignation” or imperil President Trump’s reelection chances, current and former White House officials say, even as the doctor speaks out publicly against the Trump campaign’s use of him in a recent political advertisement.
One senior White House official expressed a fear that talking too much about Fauci could tamper with Trump’s reelection chances. With just three weeks left in the presidential race, both Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are heavily courting seniors, who are particularly worried about the coronavirus Fauci is trying to fight.
A former White House official said that while all of the White House coronavirus task force doctors “get sidelined to a certain extent,” Fauci’s utility in the lead-up to the campaign as seen through a recent advertisement gives him some sticking power.
Other health officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and his team, “are just trying to survive now,” this person said.
The dispute over the ad is the latest example of Fauci knocking heads with Trump and his team.
The commercial, which is airing in Michigan, features a quote from Fauci pulled from a March Fox News interview touting the administration’s coronavirus response. The ad suggests he is praising Trump’s efforts. Fauci said, “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh disputed Fauci’s objection to the ad.
“The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration,” Murtaugh said. “The words spoken are accurate and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth. As Dr. Fauci recently testified in the Senate, President Trump took the virus seriously from the beginning, acted quickly, and saved lives.”
While some White House officials have sought to control Fauci’s public remarks, the effort typically came from Vice President Mike Pence’s team as it oversaw the coronavirus response, and not Trump’s communications team.
“I could see [Trump] firing him right after the election,” this person said, but the campaign “wouldn’t have put an ad out saying Dr. Fauci praises the president if they didn’t think that Fauci’s name was worth something.”
“He’s [senior executive service], so they could technically fire him from NIH or move him out of the NIH, but I think you’d have a mass resignation,” a former senior White House official said. The official pointed to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief’s frequent “off-script or off-message” television appearances as one particular gripe.
“There’s always been questions about his messaging,” this person said. “And I think there are some questions about the strategy that he advocated for as it relates to COVID.”
Moreover, Fauci “pulled the lever for Democrats,” this person said, by privileging policies that Democrats support, and that Trump has since diverted his attention.
“The president followed his recommendations for a long time on masks and their utility on the shutdown, and so, this idea that the president has not paid attention to the quote-unquote experts is absurd,” this person said. “I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s not paying as much attention to Tony Fauci as he did at the very beginning.”
On Tuesday, Trump compared the doctor’s public health guidance to his memorably off-kilter baseball pitch, tweeting, “Actually, Tony’s pitching arm is far more accurate than his prognostications.”
Florida Rep. Donna Shalala, a Democrat and former Secretary of Health and Human Services who has known Fauci for years, told the Washington Examiner that an ousting of the longtime National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief would cause huge turmoil at a critical time.
“I don’t think he can. He could order the secretary of HHS to dismiss him, but that would cause an unbelievable uproar,” Shalala said. “I just, I can’t imagine a situation in which in the middle of an election, they would do something like that.”
Shalala said that in her Miami district, “it’s about COVID, COVID, COVID when you go out and talk to people.”
A Pew Research Center survey conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5 among 11,929 U.S. adults, including 10,543 registered voters, and released on Oct. 9, shows Trump and Biden tied at 49% with senior voters, a group Trump carried by 7 points in 2016, according to exit polls.
“Tony is neither a Democrat or a Republican,” Shalala said, adding that despite working with him for eight years, she had “no idea” what his politics were. “He’s not political in that sense. He just tries to do the right thing and to say the right thing. He cares about human life.”
