Former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci blamed President Trump's former staff for feeding him misinformation and becoming “enraged” over the COVID-19 pandemic in a new interview.
Fauci, who spent his career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and served under the Trump and Biden administrations, became the face of the United States' response to the pandemic.
In recent years, he has become an enemy of the right after combating Trump's baseless claims about the virus and urging Americans to get vaccinated.
In the interview Friday with former Washington Post journalist Rick Atkinson, speaking at the Lincoln Theater, Fauci said he and Trump sometimes got along “really well.” But, he added, when stay-at-home and social distancing orders were initially issued in March 2020, the former president went along with them, hoping “understandably, but not realistically” that it would be similar to the flu and 'disappearing'. like magic.”
“And I said that's not true,” the doctor said, adding that the disagreement took place in front of the press.
Fauci noted that he refused to agree with the claim that the virus would disappear quickly, “because that is not the nature of this disease.”
“We have to own it. It is a different disease,” he said.
But, the doctor continued, Trump “didn't seem to be that mad at me, but his staff slowly started to get angry at me for doing that.”
After the former president claimed that hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria symptoms, would fight COVID-19 and Fauci publicly rejected the argument, he said the White House team 'tried to discredit everything I said' .
“And the White House communications team did something, which the White House people told me, was the first time they did opposition research on one of their own staffers,” he argued.
Fauci's comments came during an event at the Lincoln Theater where he discussed his new book, “On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service.”
During a recent appearance before Congress, Fauci became emotional as he spoke about the harassment and death threats he and his family face to this day. It was the first time he addressed lawmakers since retiring nearly 18 months ago.
And in an interview on a late night show earlier this week, Fauci said he wasn't trying to bring down Trump by focusing on pandemic-related messages because he has “great respect” for the office of president.
But he said he had to contradict the former president “because he said things that were not correct.”
