A senior figure on the White House coronavirus task force insisted that no one was lying to the public, after President Trump retweeted accusations that government scientists were distributing untruths.
Adm. Brett Giroir made his remarks after the president shared comments made by Chuck Woolery, known as the host of TV’s Love Connection, that accused experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of “lying.”
It came amid White House efforts to discredit another member of the task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has frequently raised the alarm about growing numbers of cases. Officials at the weekend told reporters that the country’s most senior infectious disease expert had “been wrong on things” related to COVID-19.
Giroir told NBC’s Today show he is a doctor rather than a Twitter analyst but said: “We may occasionally make mistakes based on the information we have, but none of us lie. We are completely transparent with the American people.”
The controversy comes at a difficult time for the White House and national efforts to beat the virus. More than 135,000 people have died, and the country has posted record increases in the number of cases during the past week even as the president pushes hard for schools to reopen and life to return to normal.
Against that backdrop, Trump retweeted two of Woolery’s posts, including one calling for schools to open and another casting doubt on the role of government scientists.
“The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying,” Woolery wrote. “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.”
