Dr. Fauci Delivers Blunt Critique of Trump’s Claim U.S. is ‘Rounding the Final Turn’ on COVID: ‘I’m Sorry, But I Have to Disagree With That’
Dr. Anthony Fauci said it’s “not a good thing” to downplay a serious threat when asked about the president’s comments early on in the coronavirus pandemic Friday.
Andrea Mitchell asked Fauci about President Donald Trump saying the U.S. has “rounded the final turn.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with that,” Fauci said, “because if you look at the thing that you just mentioned, the statistics, Andrea, they are disturbing. We’re plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day. And the deaths are around a thousand.”
He talked about the ongoing risks of indoor vs. outdoor events, saying “if we want to get back to the normal existence of being able to enjoy being in a restaurant, the best way to do that is to get the community level of infection at the lowest level possible” and again expressing concern about large Trump rallies where many people aren’t wearing masks.
Mitchell also asked Fauci about his comments this week about how it likely won’t be completely safe to go to movie theaters or other indoor venues until some after an effective vaccine is available.
“By the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated and protected, that’s likely not going to happen until the mid or end of 2021. So in response to that person’s question, if you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to covid, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” Fauci said.
After the audio of the president’s stunning comments to Bob Woodward dropped this week, Fauci appeared on Fox News and said, “I didn’t get the sense that he was distorting anything.”
Mitchell followed up Friday about the president’s comments to Woodward about downplaying covid and directly asked, “‘The president said to Bob Woodward, I quote, ‘I want to always play it down, I still like playing it down.’ Those are his words, in his own voice. After hearing that, hearing those tapes, with him acknowledging that, do you still believe he was not trying to distort the reality?”
Fauci responded:
“Well, you know, obviously I have gotten asked that question before. Certainly there were agreements, as you know, there were times when I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we’re having a really serious problem, you know, and the president was saying it’s something that’s going to disappear, which obviously is no the case. So there was and is some disagreements in what we say and what comes out from the White House. Again, we’re trying to get the right thing done by getting the right word out. I can’t have any explanation for the conversations between the author of the book, Bob Woodward, and the president, so, I mean, I can’t comment any more on that, except to say yes, when you downplay something that is really a threat, that’s not a good thing.”
You can watch above, via MSNBC.
