Coronavirus: Donald Trump retweets call to fire Covid-19 chief expert Anthony Fauci

United States President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire his top infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci, amid mounting criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.

A former Republican candidate’s call to Congress, using the hashtag “FireFauci,” followed an interview with the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Fauci on CNN. State of the union, in which he said a stronger early response by the administration to the outbreak “could have saved lives,” but also characterized the decision to implement social distancing guidelines as “complicated.”

“Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better advantage, but I don’t think we can say that we are where we are now because of a factor,” Fauci said on CNN Sunday Eastern Time. “It’s very complicated.”

Fauci also confirmed a New York Times History says that he and other experts had wanted to start the measures of social and physical distancing in early February.

In the past, Trump has often shown his anger at critics within his own administration by retweeting negative or teasing comments from others rather than saying anything himself. It allows him to cry “fake news” when the media interprets the retweeted material as a reflection of his views.

While he may or may not want to fire Fauci, he has used Twitter only to discredit the views of officials he disagrees with, retweeting stories and comments from his favorite news outlets such as Fox News and most recently OANN, One America News Red.

Fauci, known for his outspokenness but also for his diplomacy, has had implicit and explicit problems with Trump on several occasions. Trump demonstrated his seemingly growing irritation last week when he stepped in to prevent Fauci from answering a question about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug the president has been promoting for the treatment of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. . Fauci was also skeptical of Trump’s rush to set a date to streamline mitigation efforts to get the economy moving as the 2020 election approaches.

Fauci has become a major figure in the United States due to his prominent role in the White House coronavirus task force. He has appeared on television almost daily, alongside Trump during coronavirus briefings and interviews on news shows and even late night comedy shows. It has become so well known that people have designed donuts, t-shirts and “fan clubs” to celebrate it.

Recent polls have shown that Americans trust Fauci much more than they trust Trump, which could upset the president.

But any effort to hunt down Fauci could also further erode public confidence in the president’s handling of the deadly pandemic.

Fauci is a professional government scientist who has never been a partisan figure. First appointed to his post in 1984, Fauci has headed the agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, under six presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush said he has “absolute confidence” in Fauci and the other experts leading the coronavirus outbreak. Bush awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. And Fauci developed a reputation as an expert public health expert while fighting the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

The measured comments Sunday by Fauci, which did not mention Trump or explicitly criticize the administration and were prompted by CNN’s Jake Tapper’s interrogation, prompted a series of right-wing commentators to rebuke him. Some reports have indicated that the president has been calling advisers to get their opinions on Facui’s performance in recent days.

Some right-leaning commentators and Trump’s online base have rallied behind the president, snapping photos of Fauci as their relationship has become increasingly strained. And even when the president repeatedly criticized the mainstream media on Sunday, he praised OANN.

Trapped inside the White House due to social distancing limitations, Trump spent his Easter Sunday criticizing “Fake News,” criticizing posts that ranged from New York Times and even Fox News, after criticism of the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic that escalated over the weekend.

The president attacked journalists after a New York Times They report that the Trump administration had information that could have led to social distancing precautions much earlier and blamed the president’s slow response for the magnitude of the spread of the virus and the increased death toll.

Similar criticism was echoed in many news reports on Sunday, prompting heated responses from Trump even to Fox News.

In an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also said that the United States “would be in a much better position” if the Trump administration had acted more quickly. That interview inspired Trump to criticize the right-wing news network and Wallace personally, calling him “wannabe Mike Wallace,” a reference to the father of Chris Wallace, the legendary investigative broadcaster who died in 2012.

“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “It’s a whole new ballgame there!”

The personal attack on Wallace sparked a rebuke from Jedediah Bila, co-host of one of the President’s favorite shows over the weekend, Fox and friends.

“Enough with the third-degree name calling,” he said. “Chris is doing his job.”

Here are relevant excerpts from Sunday’s Fauci interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: the New York Times It reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend guidelines for social and physical distancing to President Trump from the third week of February, but the administration did not announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16, almost a month later. Why?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, as I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health point of view. We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it is not. But we are what it is. We are where we are right now.

TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if the measures of social distancing, physical distance and staying at home had started the third week of February, instead of mid-March?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it’s what I would have, what I could have. It is, it is very difficult to go back and say that. I mean obviously you could logically say that if you had an ongoing process and started mitigation earlier you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one will deny that.

But what goes into those kinds of decisions is … it’s complicated. But you are correct. I mean, obviously, if we had, from the start, turned everything off, it may have been a little different.