WASHINGTON – For a time there, it seemed possible that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and a holy cow from Washington, if there ever was one, could emerge unscathed from the Trump White House. He was seen as bipartisan (he served six presidents!) And as a skilled truth teller capable of sidestepping the reputational contagions that can accompany prolonged exposure to President Trump.
He dominated March and April when the coronavirus pandemic spread.
But then “Hang Fauci” signs began to appear in the “Reopen Now” rallies, and #FireFauci hashtags began to be trending on Twitter. The president himself retweeted one. And now, well …
“That’s kind of weird,” Dr. Fauci said this week when describing his current situation in the White House. He has suffered a sustained attack, from the Oval Office down, on and off the record, in presidential tweets, and in an op-ed published in USA Today by Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s top business adviser, who stated that Dr. Fauci was “wrong about everything”.
(On Wednesday, the newspaper was skeptical as Bill Sternberg, the editor of the editorial page, said the article “did not meet USA Today’s fact-checking standards.”)
“You can trust respected medical authorities,” Dr. Fauci said this week in a virtual forum at Georgetown University, almost sometimes pitiful. “I think I am one of them, so I think you can trust me.”
He urged students to avoid the “waste of time” that can be an occupational hazard for anyone trying to promote scientific research and public health in Washington. “Don’t get involved in any of the political nonsense,” he pleaded from the center of that exactly.
These are treacherous times in the sacred cow business.
Dr. Fauci can beat pandemics, receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom (awarded by President George W. Bush) and have a talent for killer lab coat press conferences, and still requires a security detail.
“I think what is happening to Dr. Fauci is outrageous, really,” said Governor Larry Hogan, Republican of Maryland, a Trump critic who has worked closely with Dr. Fauci on Maryland’s response to the coronavirus. “I’ve never seen anything like this in Washington before, and I’ve been around for a long time.”
“What is happening to Dr. Fauci” has become an urgent topic in the capital these days, as well as in scientific and medical circles where he has a solemn and almost revered status. The matter is often raised with some level of resignation, or with a hint of surprise that he has survived so long with Trump.
“On some level, I guess I’m downcast,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, professor of global health at Harvard Medical School. However, I suppose it was inevitable. Obviously, the pandemic response goes extremely badly, and when things get so bad, people need a scapegoat. But when you turn on Tony Fauci, you really are in big trouble. “
The 45th President has a knack for chasing numbers that were previously considered irreproachable. Even before his inauguration, Trump chased a herd of suspected sacred cows: Rep. John Lewis, Meryl Streep, the cast of “Hamilton” and the pope, among others, and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but his supporters seemed especially excited by Trump’s willingness to fight anyone, no matter how exalted or elite.
Washington in particular has always had a weakness for some designated figures who enjoyed bipartisan “national treasure” status. Colin L. Powell after the Gulf War or John McCain after he ran for president in 2000 or Alan Greenspan before people started blaming him for sinking the economy or Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the investigation from Russia (at least until Mr. Trump began attacking his “witch hunt” investigation and many of the president’s supporters did the same).
Dr. Fauci has honed his own credentials for more than half a century in Washington. He packed up all the correct biographical details and hobbies. He came from Brooklyn, was trained by Jesuits (Colegio de la Santa Cruz, class of 1962), loved baseball (Go Nats), ran many kilometers and subsisted on only four or five hours of sleep per night and double drink of espresso coffee Illy when he got up at dawn or earlier.
He checked all the correct boxes for a particular type of Washington icon that could “transcend politics.”
“I have known Tony for a long time, and I have never heard him identify himself as a Democrat or Republican,” said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, former director of the Food and Drug Administration and former assistant to Dr. Fauci. . “He has always been proud to have continued to run a laboratory and care for patients.”
Dr. Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968, was hailed for his pioneering AIDS research in the 1980s, and was the inspiration for a scientific protagonist in a 1991 best-selling novel, “Happy Endings,” by Sally Quinn. Journalist, hostess, and chronicler of Washington’s cultural anthropology.
He was especially adept at throwing himself into desperate situations, dealing with thorny personalities, and taming them into allies. Larry Kramer, the country’s best-known AIDS activist, would routinely criticize Dr. Fauci in the 1980s for what Mr. Kramer considered that Dr. Fauci was walking slowly of possible treatments for the deadly virus.
How did I meet Larry? He called me a killer and an incompetent idiot on the cover of San Francisco Examiner magazine, ”Dr. Fauci reminded Donald G. McNeil Jr. of the New York Times after Mr. Kramer’s death in May. Mr. Kramer finally apologized and the two forged “an extraordinary 33-year relationship,” said Dr. Fauci. “We loved each other.”
No one doubts Dr. Fauci’s ego, or his ability to cultivate his public image. He is solicitous and responsive to the media, and displays an impressive gallery of photos of himself with presidents and other dignitaries in his office at NIH. He joked in a CNN interview that he would like Brad Pitt to play him in a live “Saturday Night” Parody – and then, a few weeks later, there was Brad Pitt playing Dr. Fauci in a parody on “Saturday Night Live”.
In the early days of the pandemic, Mr. Trump would marvel at how “big” a celebrity, Dr. Fauci, had become, as if he were an obscure scientific nerd until Mr. Trump discovered him.
Dr. Fauci was always attentive to management. He paid a determined deference to the president, whom he would describe as “the boss,” even when he strongly recommended actions that went directly against Trump’s own example, such as wearing a mask.
For a time, Dr. Fauci’s avuncular and almost timid attitude proved to be disarming enough. Trump repeatedly referred to him as “a good guy.”
“He learned to tell the truth to power, but to do it in a way that did not threaten these great political egos,” said Dr. Howard Markel, professor of medical history at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.
Even in the last few days, Dr. Fauci’s defense of himself against White House attempts to undermine him has come to the notion that this unseemly melodrama is “hurting the President”, as if Trump himself was just a victim. passive of another random distraction. that fell from the sky
“I remember hearing Tony talk once about working with all these different presidents,” said Dr. Jha of Harvard Medical School. “He said he didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out what his angles were.”
“In his humble way,” added Dr. Jha, “he said,” I’m not smart enough to figure out what someone’s angle is. “And that generally worked well for him.”
