- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham defended Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday after a series of attacks on him from the White House.
- “We do not have a problem with Dr. Fauci,” Graham told reporters.
- “We need to focus on doing things that get us where we need to go. Therefore, I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Fauci. I think any effort to undermine him will not be productive, frankly.” “
- Graham’s comments came after the White House distributed a list of misleading conversation topics over the weekend criticizing Fauci for confusing the United States’ response to the coronavirus outbreak.
- But Fauci found himself in the sights of President Donald Trump amid a resurgence of the virus outbreak in the U.S., as well as in recent polls showing that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump.
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Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina defended Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday after a series of attacks on him from the White House.
“We don’t have a problem with Dr. Fauci,” Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters. “We need to focus on doing things that get us where we need to go. Therefore, I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Fauci. I think any effort to undermine him will not be productive, frankly.” “
Fauci is the country’s leading infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. But he found himself in the sights of President Donald Trump amid a resurgence of the virus outbreak in the U.S., as well as in recent polls showing that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump.
A series of Insider polls conducted with SurveyMonkey in mid-March, mid-April, and late April asked respondents to rate a number of key public figures on a scale of 1 to 5 based on how trustworthy they were for leadership and accurate information on the subject. coronavirus.
In all three surveys, respondents gave Fauci and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo the highest marks for their handling of COVID-19 and ranked Trump and Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner at the bottom.
In a national poll of 1,337 registered voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College in mid-June, 76% of respondents said they trusted Fauci to get “accurate information” about the COVID-19 pandemic compared to just the 26% who said they trusted Triunfo.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump is concerned about Fauci’s high approval rating among Americans.
Meanwhile, the media outlet also reported over the weekend that the White House is circulating a list of talking points that attack Fauci for not taking the outbreak seriously enough from the start, despite Fauci being a member. from Trump’s own coronavirus task force.
Talking points criticized Fauci for not taking the outbreak seriously enough, even as the president himself continues to downplay the crisis, ignoring warnings from public health officials and urging US states to reopen their schools. and economies even when new cases arise across the country.
Trump’s top aides, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and trade adviser Peter Navarro, recently echoed those points and criticized Fauci for giving what they called contradictory advice.
But as the Post and several public health experts pointed out, White House talk points left out critical portions of Fauci’s comments in which he specified that he was doing assessments based on the best information available at the time, and that the perspective could dramatically change along the way.
Graham’s comments this week come as the United States is seeing an increase in new COVID-19 cases. As of Tuesday, more than 3.3 million people across the country have been infected and more than 135,000 have died as a result.
Grace Panetta contributed reporting.
