Any new virus relief seems far as election day approaches
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — President Donald Trump came out swinging Monday against Dr. Anthony
Fauci and polls that show Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden in key battleground states, as he tried to buck up his campaign team two weeks out from Election Day.
Back on the trail after his COVID-19 infection, Trump was facing intense pressure to turn around his campaign, hoping for the type of last-minute surge that revived his candidacy four years ago and plunging into an aggressive travel schedule despite the pandemic. But his lack of a consistent message, newly surging virus cases and his attacks on experts like Fauci could undermine his final efforts to appeal to voters outside his most loyal base.
Trump insisted to supporters that he believes he will still win another term, though allowing that he didn’t have that same sense of confidence two weeks ago when he was hospitalized for treatment for the virus. Seeking to shore up the morale of his staff, Trump blasted his government’s own scientific experts as too negative, even as his handling of the pandemic that has killed nearly 220,000 Americans remains a central issue to voters.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said of the government’s top infectious disease expert. “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci’s a disaster.”
The doctor is both respected and popular, and Trump’s rejection of scientific advice on the pandemic has already drawn bipartisan condemnation.
Fauci, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, said he was not surprised that Trump contracted the virus after he held large events with few face coverings. Fauci also objected to the president’s campaign using his words in a campaign ad.
“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said of the president.
Trump’s comments drew a defense of the scientist from Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, who praised Fauci as one of the nation’s “most distinguished public servants.”
As Trump turned his flouting of scientific advice into a campaign applause line, Alexander added concerning Fauci, “If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat.”