President Donald Trump wants to know why his approval ratings of the coronavirus response are not as high as the administration’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“It has a very good approval rating,” Trump said of Fauci on Tuesday during a White House press conference on the pandemic. “And I like that, it’s good, because remember, he is working for this administration.”
“And it has this high approval rating,” said Trump, “So why don’t I have a high approval rating for it, and the administration, for the virus?”
The president was asked about the Twitter posts he retweeted on Monday night accusing Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of deceptive Americans.
“I don’t even know what his stance is on this,” Trump said when asked how Fauci was allegedly misleading Americans about hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that is not proven to be an effective treatment for Covid-19.
The posts have since been removed. But Trump has always advocated hydroxychloroquine and had even taken it as a prophylactic measure.
Fauci, however, has further depreciated the drug’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.
Fauci said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday that clinical trials have overwhelmingly shown that hydroxychloroquine “is not effective” in treating Covid-19.
“I have not been deceiving the American public under any circumstances,” added Fauci.
Despite being part of the Trump administration, Fauci has come under fire from inside the White House. Trump’s business adviser, Peter Navarro, wrote an opinion piece criticizing Fauci for being “wrong about everything I’ve interacted with.” And a White House official even circulated a list of Fauci’s alleged missteps that looked like an opposition investigation-type document used in political campaigns.
Still, Fauci continues to enjoy high approval ratings from public polls on his efforts against the pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of the country have faith in Fauci, according to a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month.
Just over a third of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the virus, according to the poll.
“We could have caught other people, we could have gotten someone else, it didn’t have to be Dr. Fauci,” Trump said in the press Tuesday night. “He is working with our administration and, for the most part, we have done more or less what he and others, Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others, who are great, recommended it. “
“It’s funny. A man works for us, with us, very closely, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, also very well thought out, and yet they are highly appreciated, but nobody loves me,” Trump said. .
“It can only be my personality. That’s all,” he added.
More than 4.3 million people in the US have contracted Covid-19 and at least 148,298 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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