Trump suggests he might try to fire disease expert Fauci after election

OPA-LOCKA, FLORIDA: US President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that he might seek to fire a highly respected member of his coronavirus task force, Dr Anthony Fauci, after Fauci further criticised Trump’s handling of the virus.

Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease expert who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has taken issue with Trump’s repeated assertions that the US fight against the virus was “rounding the turn” when in fact tens of thousands of people are being infected daily.

“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Fauci told The Washington Post on Friday. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

When Trump defended his handling of the virus at a latenight campaign rally at OpaLocka airport in the Miami area, a “Fire Fauci” chant broke out.

In response to the chant, Trump said, “don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election,” adding he appreciated their “advice.”

It’s the most direct Trump has been in suggesting he was serious about trying to remove Fauci from his position. Fauci is one of the most popular health experts in the US, a fact that Trump has cited in the past to avoid getting into tangles with him.

At the campaign rally in Opalocka, Trump expressed frustration that the surging cases of the virus that has killed more than 230,000 Americans so far this year remains prominent in the news. The US is the worst-affected by the pandemic with 230,996 deaths from 9,207,364 infections as of Sunday, according to an AFP tally.