Fauci Defends Himself Against Trump and Critics: Revising Advice on Masks was ‘Changing With the Data…Not Flip-Flopping’

Dr. Anthony Fauci is very familiar with the criticisms thrown at him from former President Donald Trump and others, especially regarding his change from his original advice regarding face masks at the beginning of the pandemic, and he took a few minutes on The Mehdi Hasan Show on Sunday to push back at those critics.

Show host Mehdi Hasan brought up Trump’s recent comments at a Republican donor event, in which he went on an off-script profane tirade insulting a long list of targets, including calling Fauci “full of crap,” and other similar Trump comments from earlier this year.

“I know you said in the past you didn’t resign because you didn’t want to leave a void, completely understandable, but do you regret staying on?” Hasan asked. “If he says he wasn’t listening to you and gagging you in the process, why didn’t you just quit and speak out freely about the dangers?”

“I don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat with former President Trump and giving a rebuttal for everything he says,” replied Fauci. “That is not productive.” However, he did say that the reason he did not quit was “because I did feel if I left there would not be a voice there to push back against some of the things that were going on there…I would prefer to move on and look ahead how we can address the challenges ahead of us.”

“But just do you accept that he was not listening to your advice?” asked Hasan. “Was he ignoring your advice? Was that a true statement?”

Fauci noted that Trump did listen to some things that he and Dr. Deborah Birx said, but then didn’t listen to other things. “To say he did not listen at all to the medical advisers I guess that tells you something, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” replied Hasan. “Tells me that he needlessly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths not listening to his top scientific advisers.”

Hasan then turned to a clip from Fauci appearing on CBS’ 60 Minutes in March 2020, in which he discouraged wearing face masks — a clip that has been used by his critics to attempt to discredit him — and asked the doctor if he thought that was a “huge mistake in hindsight.”

As Fauci explained:

At the time, three things were going on. We were told very clearly at the coronavirus task force — including by the Surgeon General, who’s a good person all the way — that there was a clear shortage of masks, and if we went around recommending masks, the health care providers putting themselves in harm’s way every single day would not have enough, point number one.

Point number two, there was no evidence at the time that masks outside of the setting of the hospital worked. There were no data to show that.

Number three, we did not know that at least 50% of the infections were being spread asymptomatically. Namely, by people that had no symptoms. That’s why at that time we, I and others, made that statement.

Fast forward a month or two after. A, it became clear there was no shortage of masks. In fact, cloth masks work. B, we started to see rather substantial data that masks outside of the setting of the hospital work, to prevent infection, and to prevent you from infecting someone else. Three, we found out to our horror that 50% or more of the infections were transmitted by people who did not know they were infected.

…If something is static and you change your mind about it, you’re flip-flopping. If something changes, the data change, and you change with the data and rely on the data, you’re not flip-flopping.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!