The White House slammed back at suggestions that President Trump would fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of his leading advisers on the coronavirus pandemic.
“President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci,” White House principal deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said on Monday. “This media chatter is ridiculous.”
Speculation Trump would get rid of Fauci grew Sunday evening after Trump retweeted a post calling for the nation’s top infectious disease expert to be fired. Earlier Sunday, Fauci had said lives could have been saved had the government moved more quickly to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
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Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
In a statement, Gidley said Trump’s tweet “exposed” flawed attempts by the media to suggest Trump slow-walked the government’s coronavirus response against the advice of his public health experts.
“It was Democrats and the media who ignored Coronavirus,” Gidley said, turning their attention instead to the president’s impeachment, which began in the House in November before being taken up by the Senate in January.
The White House announced a national public health emergency and China travel ban on Jan 31 amid mounting concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. Trump was acquitted on in the Senate on impeachment charges five days later.
The press then attacked the president for the decision to ban travel from China and Europe, Gidley said. “Dr Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump.”
The president and Fauci have denied there is a rift between them but speculation has been rife.
On days where Fauci has been absent from the coronavirus briefing, the White House has faced questions about his whereabouts. A mild frenzy broke out online in late March as viewers noted his absence. “I was just with him,” Trump said, explaining that Fauci was at a “taskforce meeting.”
Reached by phone later that evening, Fauci sought to allay concerns that he’d either been infected with the virus or fired. “I mean, I’m not, to my knowledge, coronavirus-infected,” he Science Magazine, and joked: “To my knowledge, I haven’t been fired.”
Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul called for the president or “the people” to oust Fauci in an internet video shared last week, and called Fauci a “fraud.” Paul had previously suggested the virus was a “big hoax.”
“State and local authoritarians love panic, as well,” Paul wrote before zeroing in on Dr. Fauci as the “chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration.”
