Who’s the real idiot?

“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots . . . Fauci’s a disaster.”

- President Donald Trump, Monday, October 19

When the President of the United States calls the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his fellow scientists “idiots”, the American public should probably sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, those who are used to Trump spouting nonsense and invective aren’t startled by one more stupid tweet and those who support him are more likely to say he’s just telling it like it is. But is he?

Let’s start with the President. Donald John Trump went to New York Military Academy, one of the oldest military prep schools in the United States, where he is said to have done well, although it appears he majored in soccer and baseball. He also became Cadet Captain. NYMA is also where he took to heart his mentor’s unofficial motto, “Winning isn’t the important thing. It’s the only thing.”

In 1964 he went to Fordham University but after two years switched to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he received a B.A. in economics in 1968. Rumour has it that the switch in schools came because of poor grades. On the other hand, Trump claims he graduated top of his class. Neither claim can be proven because the President had his legal team bar any of his former schools from releasing his academic records. What is known, is that over the working career of this self-proclaimed “stable genius,” his companies have faced over 4,000 state and federal legal actions.

On to the idiot. John Anthony Fauci attended the Jesuit run College of the Holy Cross one of the oldest and most respected colleges in the United State. In 1962 he obtained a B.A. in classics on a pre-med track. He then attended the Medical School of Cornell University where he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree. He also graduated top in his class but, unlike The Donald, you can check Fauci’s record.

Since that time, he has developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases, helped create the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief and written hundreds of papers on the immune system. Between 1983 and 2002 Fauci was the 13th most cited scientist among 2.5 to 3 million authors. According to many of his peers, Fauci is the most knowledgeable specialist in the area of viral infections and the workings of the immune system in the entire United Sates.

According to Donald Trump’s peers, he doesn’t read anything that takes more than one page to write and he cheats at golf.

Admittedly, Trump isn’t the only politician that has ever got a little creative with his curriculum vitae. Joe Biden, for example, claimed he graduated in the top half of his law school class at Syracuse. When it was pointed out that he was actually 76th in a class of 85, Biden gave the usual political ‘oops’ and never mentioned it again. Whether Biden was lying or is just mathematically challenged we’ll likely never know.

What we do know is that to this date under President Trump’s ‘plan’, there have been 8,362,181 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., up 60,931 from yesterday, and 224,308 deaths. I’ll let you decide who’s the idiot.