White House Puts Out Statement Going After Fauci’s Credibility
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Over the weekend, the White House sent out a statement to multiple media outlets trying to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci — one of the top members of the White House’s own coronavirus task force.
Fauci’s public sidelining had been notable — he’s been making less frequent media appearances and just last week one Sunday show said their attempts to book him haven’t been approved for months, while the president himself has made it clear he’s at odds with Fauci — but recent reports have indicated that Fauci has been privately sidelined as well. Per the Washington Post:
Fauci no longer briefs Trump and is “never in the Oval [Office] anymore,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Fauci last spoke to the president during the first week of June, according to a person with knowledge of Trump’s calendar.
In recent weeks, Fauci has been critical of the U.S. response and warning about the nation not being in a great position right now with respect to combatting the coronavirus.
One notable detail in the Post report that caught attention was a reaction from the White House, in which an unnamed official provided the paper a statement criticizing its own top expert for being “wrong” early on:
A White House official released a statement saying that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things” and included a lengthy list of the scientist’s comments from early in the outbreak. Those included his early doubt that people with no symptoms could play a significant role in spreading the virus — a notion based on earlier outbreaks that the novel coronavirus would turn on its head. They also point to public reassurances Fauci made in late February, around the time of the first U.S. case of community transmission, that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”
NBC News reported on the same White House statement this afternoon in a report headlined “White House seeks to discredit Fauci amid coronavirus surge,” which noted that the list looked like political oppo research:
Many of the past statements the White House is criticizing Fauci for are ones that were based on the best available data at the time and were widely echoed by Trump, other members of the task force and senior White House officials. As Surgeon General Jerome Adams told CBS News on Sunday, “When you learn more, you change those recommendations. Our recommendations have changed.”
On Meet the Press Sunday, Admiral Brett Giroir — another member of the coronavirus task force — said, “I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100% right, and he also doesn’t necessarily — and he admits that — have the whole national interest in mind. He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”
