Fauci, Birx Reportedly Warned White House Against Holding Trump Campaign Rally Amid Surging Pandemic Cases

Coronavirus task force members Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx reportedly warned the White House this past week against President Donald Trump’s decision to hold massive campaign rally in Tulsa amid surging pandemic cases in Oklahoma.

According to a new story from NBC News, the pair of public health experts “both vocalized concerns internally in the last week about the safety of holding a rally on Saturday with as many as 19,000 people in an enclosed arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” That state just shattered a record with 450 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, a nearly 700% rise since June 8.

One of the reporters bylined on the story, Carol Lee, appeared on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to discuss her reporting with host Nicolle Wallace.

“Two doctors who have become household names because they stood shoulder to shoulder sometime barely shielding their grimaces at his remarks at those coronavirus task force briefings advised this White House and this president not to do exactly what he is doing tomorrow,” Wallace noted.

“Two people familiar with these discussions are telling us that they cautioned the White House against holding rallies, these large scale gatherings indoors because of the health risks of that,” Lee explained, before pointing out the 79-year-old Fauci said earlier this week he would not personally attend the rally because his age puts him in a high-risk category should he contract the virus. “A White House official

told us that they did discuss this with members of the task force and sought their input but point to the fact that Oklahoma is in a phase three of reopening and the task force had a hand in writing those the phase three guidelines, and feel comfortable with where they are at.”

“And this is part of a larger pattern that we have seen since the task force’s inception and as the pandemic continued and the president started to push back on the closing up of the country,” Lee continued. “And the tension has been there where you have members of the task force saying that they recommend one thing and the White House and the president saying that that is not exactly the direction that they want for go in. And that is what is happening with the rallies and happened behind the scenes.”

“For how, what you will see is not Dr. Fauci or Dr. Brix from the podium. They will essentially use the White House press secretary as the translator of whatever those folks are — the experts are saying behind the scenes and that she can say — give their message once it goes through obviously the White House’s preferred filter from the White House podium. But the big headline here is that these experts have said that — and advised behind the scenes that something like what the president is planning to do tomorrow is not recommended.”

“

And they will use the White House press secretary, who today announced that she won’t be wearing a mask, which is what doctors Birx and Fauci recommend,” Wallace added.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.