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Anthony Fauci Says Trump Used To Scold Him For Not Being 'More Positive' About COVID-19
Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said then-President Donald Trump used to scold him for not being “more positive” about COVID-19 as the pandemic spiralled out of control nationwide.
In a new interview with The New York Times, Fauci spoke somewhat candidly about his experience working for Trump and their publicly tumultuous relationship. Trump floated the idea of firing Fauci, then a member of his White House coronavirus task force, during one of his campaign rallies in November.
Fauci, who was sworn in as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser on Wednesday, frequently contradicted Trump’s baseless claims about COVID-19. In his interview with the Times, he recalled Trump’s repeated claims that the virus would simply “go away.”
“It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States,” Fauci said. “I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK.”
“That’s when I started to get into some trouble,” he continued. “The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president.”
Asked if Trump ever confronted him for contradicting him about the pandemic, Fauci said the then-president would express “disappointment.”
“There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going,” Fauci said, “and the president would call me up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive.’”
“He would get on the phone and express disappointment in me that I was not being more positive,” Fauci added. He said Trump didn’t explain why he was upset...
