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WASHINGTON: Former United States President Donald Trump on Monday (March 29) lashed out at two of the country’s leading figures in the battle over coronavirus after they criticized his handling of the pandemic.
In an irate statement, Trump described Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx as “two self-advocates trying to reinvent history to cover up their bad instincts and flawed recommendations, which I thankfully almost always overruled.”
Trump accused Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of trying to take credit for developing vaccines and “moving goalposts to look his best.”
The former president added that Birx, who was his coordinator of the coronavirus task force, was “a proven liar with very little credibility.”
The bitter outbreak came after Fauci told CNN how shocked he had been when Trump last April called on states to “break free” as experts pleaded with Americans to obey lockdown orders.
Birx said in an interview that, while working at the White House, she had received a “very uncomfortable” phone call from Trump after speaking publicly about the rapid spread of COVID-19.
He also said that “the federal government did not provide consistent messages to the American people and that is failure number one.”
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The interviews with Fauci and Birx were part of a CNN documentary on the pandemic.
Birx retired after a painful stint in the White House that tarnished his once stellar reputation.
Fauci, 80, is now the White House’s top pandemic adviser under President Joe Biden after Trump’s electoral defeat.
“Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx moved too slowly, and if it were up to them, we would currently be locked in our basements while our country suffered from a financial depression,” Trump said.
He also attacked Fauci’s ability to throw a baseball, describing him as “the king of flip flops” and saying that “Birx was a terrible medical advisor, so I rarely took his advice.”
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Trump, who has a habit of vigorously fighting back any criticism, has kept a relatively low profile since leaving the White House and moving to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Under Trump, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States soared to the highest number in the world as it resisted masks, lockdowns and other measures to contain the pandemic.
Biden has rapidly increased vaccine distribution, but also warned that the pandemic, which has killed 549,000 people in the US, remains a major threat as data shows another potential increase in infections.
