Trump Retweets Call for Dr. Fauci to Be Fired Over Coronavirus Comments
The member of the White House’s coronavirus task force said on CNN that the U.S. “could have saved more lives” if it had moved faster
President Trump stoked questions about the fate of Dr. Anthony Fauci after retweeting a critic who called for the member of the White House’s coronavirus task force to be fired after he said lives could have been saved if the government had acted more quickly.
Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has drawn denunciations from some on the right, who have questioned his advice and whether it helped contribute to the economy’s free fall.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday morning, Dr. Fauci said that the government “could have saved more lives” if it had moved sooner to impose social-distancing restrictions.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump retweeted a message from a former Republican congressional candidate attacking that comment. “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,” wrote DeAnna Lorraine, who challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in her San Francisco-area district.
Her message went on: “Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci…”
Mr. Trump didn’t repeat those words directly himself, but shared the message with his nearly 77 million followers. The retweet was one of several postings on Easter Sunday in which Mr. Trump pushed back on criticism he has faced over his handling of the crisis.
The president has at times felt frustrated with Dr. Fauci’s candor, aides say, as he has called for strict social-distancing measures to combat the virus. The two have also differed on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug the president has repeatedly promoted as a possible treatment for the virus. Dr. Fauci has noted there are cases that show the drug may have an effect but others that show no impact. “I think in terms of science, I don’t think we could definitively say it works,” he said April 5 on CBS.
During a briefing last week, Mr. Trump moved to cut off the doctor from answering a reporter’s question about medical evidence behind the drug.
But Dr. Fauci has also drawn praise from the president, who listened to his advice in agreeing to extend social-distancing guidelines through the end of April. In a March interview on Fox News, Mr. Trump said, “Tony’s extraordinary” and that “we get along very well.”
During his Sunday CNN appearance, Dr. Fauci said that medical experts faced political constraints in trying to push early for a swift response to the virus. “What goes into those decisions is complicated,” he said. “But you’re right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
Despite his critics, Dr. Fauci—through White House briefings and regular television interviews—has become a popular figure in the country. A Quinnipiac poll last week put his approval rating at 78% for handling of the crisis, versus the 46% approval rating for the president.