- Dan Scavino, longtime assistant to President Donald Trump and deputy chief of staff for communications, posted a cartoon on his Facebook page Monday night taunting Dr. Anthony Fauci.
- The cartoon features an image of Fauci as a faucet choking the United States economy with orders to “Shut up and obey!”
- It comes amid mounting White House attacks on Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, who has been critical of Trump’s response to the coronavirus.
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Dan Scavino, longtime assistant to President Donald Trump and deputy chief of staff for communications, posted a cartoon on his Facebook page Monday night taunting Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The post features an image of Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert who is helping to lead the federal government’s coronavirus response, with a tap coming out of his nose. The drawing shows Fauci’s faucet drowning the United States economy with orders “Schools are closed this fall!”; “Undefined lock!”; and “Shut up and obey!” in a waterfall of “extra-cold” water.
A cartoon of Senator Rand Paul, who has repeatedly attacked Fauci in congressional hearings, points at Fauci and yells “Shut up !!”
It comes after the White House sent journalists an anonymous statement over the weekend attacking Fauci and listing what he said were incorrect statements he made earlier this year about the pandemic.
“Sorry, Dr. Faucet!” Scavino wrote alongside the cartoon. “At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, like you, it is done publicly, and not cowardly, behind leaked journalists. Until tomorrow!”
—Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
During Monday’s briefing at the White House, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that the White House is not trying to undermine Fauci and did not produce “opposition research” on the public health expert.
“Why is the White House tearing Dr. Fauci apart?” CNN’s Jim Acosta asked McEnany. “The President has gone to anonymous sources in the past. Why not have the guts to trash Dr. Fauci with his own names?”
McEnany said: “Dr. Fauci and the President have always had a very good working relationship.”
Fauci has publicly criticized the president’s leadership in responding to the coronavirus, and the president has brushed it aside.
The public health expert said last week that Trump had not met with him since June 2 and that he had not been allowed to brief the president in more than two months.
Fauci suggested that the president and his aides are pushing him aside and censored because he is telling difficult truths about the pandemic out of control of the United States.
“I have a reputation, as you probably have discovered, of telling the truth at all times and not of covering things with sugar,” he told the Financial Times. “And that may be one of the reasons I haven’t been on television much lately.”
