Trump aides undercut Fauci as he presses virus concerns
President Trump’s advisers undercut the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the weekend, anonymously providing details to various news outlets about statements he had made early in the coronavirus outbreak that they said were inaccurate.
The move to treat Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades, as if he were a warring political rival came as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in coronavirus cases, as well as his lack of access to Trump over the past several weeks.
The move came just days after the White House called school reopening guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overly restrictive, part of a pattern of the administration trying to sideline recommendations that could slow the reopening of the economy, which Trump views as vital to his flailing reelection effort.
Aides to Trump first released to the Washington Post what the paper called a “lengthy list” of remarks that Fauci had made about the virus when it was in its early stages. That list featured several comments from Fauci that White House aides had privately complained about for months, including one in February in which he minimized the chance of asymptomatic spread and said people did not need to make big changes to their lives.
White House officials pointed to a statement by Fauci in a Feb. 29 interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a daybyday basis.” But they omitted a warning he delivered right after.
“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”
In the same interview, Fauci also warned that the coronavirus could become “a major outbreak.”
The list of statements, laid out in the style of a campaign’s opposition research document, was later released to several news outlets. It was an extraordinary move for the White House to provide news organizations with such a document about a health official who works for the administration and retains a high level of public trust.
Fauci declined to comment. A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity insisted that the administration is not trying to discredit Fauci but rather remind members of the public of his record and that it should be listening to a range of doctors.
A poll conducted for the New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67% of Americans trusted Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26% trusted the president.
With the United States leading the world in cases and deaths, Fauci has grown more outspoken, even as Trump has pushed for states to reopen and has threatened to withhold funding from school districts if they do not reopen in the fall.