USA TODAY International Edition
Trump skipping task force meetings
Fauci: President hasn’t attended one in months
WASHINGTON – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said Friday that President Donald Trump has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in “several months” and the meetings themselves have greatly “diminished”.
Fauci, a leading member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview on “Meet the Press Daily” that he hasn’t directly spoken to or interacted with Trump in some time, and the number of task force meetings have “diminished”.
Led by Vice President Mike Pence, the task force used to meet daily early in the pandemic, but that has now been scaled back to once a week, Fauci said, due to the White House focusing on an “economic reopening.”
“We certainly interact with the vice president at the task force meetings, and the vice president makes our feelings and what we talk about there known to the president,” he said when pressed about the last time the president attended. “But direct involvement with the president and discussions, I have not done that in awhile.”
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who sits on the task force as well, told NPR that Trump has primarily received information from Pence and Dr. Scott Atlas.
Atlas, who is not an infectious disease expert, is now a White House adviser on the coronavirus and has publicly downplayed the virus. Reports from The Washington Post said Atlas has been pushing herd immunity, and Trump has been listening.
“The President is routinely briefed about the coronavirus each and every day. The relevant information is brought to him on the big decisions, and then he moves forward in the way that’s best for our country,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews told USA TODAY in a statement.
Fauci said the nation is in a “precarious” position and people need to grasp how difficult winter will be if infections continue to spike.
“We don’t want to shut the country down. Every time I talk about things that we need to do, people get concerned. We’re not talking about shutting down, but we’re talking about doubling down on some of the fundamental public health measures that we need to adhere to,” Fauci said, referring to mask- wearing and social distancing. “They seem rather simple, but they really do work.”