After President Donald Trump partied on social media, presenting false claims of a coronavirus cure, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended his work against some of the attacks on him personally.
On the ABC Good morning america On Tuesday, host George Stephanopoulos asked Fauci, “Can you continue to do your job when the President of the United States publicly questions your credibility in this way?”
Fauci sighed and said, “I don’t know how to deal with that. I will certainly continue to do my job. I don’t tweet. I don’t even read them, so I really don’t want to go there. I just keep doing my job no matter what comes out, because I think it’s very important in the midst of a crisis regarding an epidemic, a pandemic. This is what I do, this is what I have been trained for my entire professional life, and I will continue to do it. “
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Stephanopoulos noted that Trump retweeted a claim that Fauci had been “deceiving the American public.”
“I have not been deceiving the American public under any circumstances,” Fauci said.
Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus working group.
Trump had retweeted from the War Room: Pandemic account, which included a paraphrased quote from Dr. Lee Vliet, who has been a critic of Fauci, alleging that he misled the public, “discarding hydroxychloroquine and calling Remdesivir the new gold standard.” War room: pandemic is a radio and podcast program co-hosted by Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist at Trump.
Trump retweeted another account that used the hashtag “FaucitheFraud” and promoted the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. The Food and Drug Administration has said that the drug carries health risks for certain patients.
Trump also shared clips from a video, in which a group of doctors had made a number of claims about the coronavirus, including that hydroxychloroquine works as a “cure” for the coronavirus. One of the figures in the video, according to The Washington Post, was Stella Immanuel, who received a medical license in Texas in November. She has promoted other conspiracy theories, according to The Daily Beast.
Facebook removed the video, and a platform spokesperson said, “Yes, we removed it for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.” Twitter and YouTube also removed the viral video.
Twitter also added a note to its trending topics, noting that the FDA had concluded that “the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine has been touted as a possible treatment for COVID-19, but the FDA says the drug is unlikely to be effective. “and revoked his emergency use authorization in June.”
