President Trump ramped up his criticism on Monday of Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, to a degree that has yet to be seen in public.
As Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has sought to remain apolitical and focused on encouraging social distancing and mask-wearing, Trump, espousing cavalier attitude toward health precautions during the pandemic, has grown increasingly wary of the difference in messaging.
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That frustration appeared to reach a boiling point during a phone call with campaign staff on Monday morning, according to multiple reports.
Trump said Fauci has been a “disaster” and claimed that if he had listened to all of the advice given to him from Fauci, “We’d have 500,000 deaths.”
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots. … He’s been here for 500 years. He’s like this wonderful sage telling us how,” he added. “Every time he goes on television there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. This guy’s a disaster.”
Trump has repeatedly used Fauci’s old remarks about the coronavirus, such as urging people not to wear masks at the beginning of the pandemic because experts were worried medical workers would run out of supplies in an effort to denigrate and delegitimize the health official. This includes a campaign ad that Fauci said took his comments “out of context.”
Fauci, who has been director of NIAID since 1984, told CBS’s 60 Minutes in a report that aired on Sunday that he was “absolutely not” surprised Trump contracted the coronavirus after hosting a crowded White House event last month to announce Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee.
