Over time, he learned to navigate the collisions between politics and health. That has never been more difficult than in this administration, but Dr. Fauci has acknowledged that to remain effective, you must navigate Mercurial moods and Trump’s contempt for the experience. The two once enjoyed an occasional joking relationship, and the President several times followed Dr. Fauci’s advice to extend the national orientation to stay home. But that was all that came; Trump calls Dr. Fauci “Anthony,” a name few use for someone who prefers the more casual nickname “Tony.”
Dr. Fauci’s international reputation has not spared him from attacks by the White House, which first appeared in The Washington Post and later in other media. The criticism, which was distributed anonymously to reporters, detailed what the White House believed to be a series of premature or contradictory recommendations that Dr. Fauci has made in recent months as the virus spread to the United States. United.
For example, White House officials pointed to a statement by Dr. Fauci in an interview on February 29 that “at this time, there is no need to change anything you are doing day by day.” But they omitted a warning he uttered just after.
“Right now, the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see the community spread, this could change and force you to be much more vigilant about doing things that would protect you from the spread.”
In the same interview, Dr. Fauci also warned that the coronavirus could become “a major outbreak.”
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, took over the opposition-style investigative effort on Monday, saying her office simply “provided a direct answer to what was a direct question” from The Post about whether Dr. Fauci had made mistakes during the course of the response.
Even some of Dr. Fauci’s top colleagues in the Department of Health and Human Services have begun to echo the White House. Admiral Brett P. Giroir, assistant secretary of health and member of the coronavirus task force, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Dr. Fauci “is not 100 percent right, nor is he necessarily does – and admits that, take into account the entire national interest. “
Admiral Giroir added that Dr. Fauci “looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”
Dr. Fauci spent the early days of the pandemic as the leading scientific voice in the federal government’s response before falling out of favor with Trump and his top aides for blunt comments inconsistent with the president’s message of economic revival. At working group meetings, Dr. Fauci has often characterized himself as a lonely pessimist in a room where some officials have been eager to turn the coronavirus’ alarming trajectory away.
