The Trump administration is leaking negative stories to the press about Dr. Anthony Fauci, citing his conflicting statements on the virus. Some White House officials aren’t covertly leaking, but are giving open interviews against Fauci.
The White House assault on Dr. Fauci continues.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro claims: "Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."https://t.co/C1VuApmjjQ
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 15, 2020
Howard Kurtz, media reporter for Fox News, has noticed the White House anti-Fauci spin, “To be sure, the charge that the White House has done an ‘oppo dump’ on Fauci is rather overblown. To me, that signifies a stealthy handoff of documents or encoded digital communication to get dirt into the hands of reporters.”
He added:
“The Trump team is just stabbing Fauci in the front. And they’re doing it by pointing to his past public statements, which are obviously fair game…Behind the scenes, the president hasn’t spoken to Fauci in more than a month. What the White House has done, among other things, is basically kept Fauci off television.
‘Face the Nation’ host Margaret Brennan told viewers she’s been trying to book him for three months. The coronavirus task force briefings have become infrequent, handed off to Mike Pence and moved out of the White House, and Fauci’s schedule was such that he couldn’t attend the last one.”
The Washington Post has noted, “Several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.”
The Post says this “included a lengthy list of the scientist’s comments from early in the outbreak. Those included his early doubt that people with no symptoms could play a significant role in spreading the virus…They also point to public reassurances Fauci made in late February, around the time of the first U.S. case of community transmission, that ‘at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.’ ”
Adm. Brett Giroir of the U.S. Public Health Service hit Fauci on Sunday, saying his views on the coronavirus are “not 100 percent right.” Giroir thinks Fauci’s analysis on how to handle the pandemic “don’t always have the nation’s interest in mind.” He even blasted Fauci by stating that he has a “narrow public health point of view.”
But Giroir insists Fauci’s issues have not impacted the White House virus response, “The vice president, I know, briefs the president on a daily basis, so nobody feels like anything is held back. We all take this as a serious crisis, it’s got to be science driving the policy and that’s the way it is.”
The issue at hand is not only medical prognostication, but also political. Fauci has been publicly critical of the Trump administration’s plans to open schools in the fall, to hold public campaign events, and to generally ease virus restrictions.
Democrats and the media have noticed Fauci’s views and have used them and him to bash the president. The president and his team have not taken kindly to that, hence the White House pushback. This will not end soon, as both the president and Fauci are not men who are used to backing down.
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on July 15, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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