Dr. Anthony Fauci has slammed the way President Donald Trump is conducting his daily coronavirus press conferences, complaining about the number of times he has to tell President Trump facts to get his point across, and stating ‘I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down.’
Dr. Fauci, who it was revealed sent a series of “love letters” to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state, has complained that he has to tell President Trump facts “four times” to get them to sink in.
He also publicly acknowledged that he will ‘keep pushing’ to correct any inaccuracies about the coronavirus that are relayed by the White House.
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DailyMail report: The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in an interview with Science that ‘when you’re dealing with the White House, sometimes you have to say things 1,2,3,4 times, and then it happens. So I’m going to keep pushing.’
He said that he tries to correct Trump but he ‘can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down.’
He criticized the president for publicly shaking hands with people, saying: ‘I say that to the task force. I say that to the staff. We should not be doing that.’
‘Not only that – we should be physically separating a bit more on those press conferences.’
The top immunologist said that he was pushing for the White House to adopt virtual press conferences to avoid briefings crowded with experts, politicians and journalists – contradicting official advice to not to gather in groups of above ten people.
He said that he would never call refer to COVID-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’ as Trump has done – which critics have condemned as racist.
His remarks, the latest in a string of public rebukes against the president, combined with his absence from Sunday’s White House press briefing on the coronavirus have fueled speculation of tension between the two men.
The doctor discussed the president’s claim that China should have warned the US two or three months before they publicly announced the sequence of the development of coronavirus.
‘The way it happened is that after he made that statement [suggesting China could have revealed the discovery of a new coronavirus three to four months earlier], I told the appropriate people, it doesn’t comport, because two or three months earlier would have been September,’ he said.
The virus was only discovered in late December.
He continued: ‘The next time they sit down with him and talk about what he’s going to say, they will say, by the way, Mr. President, be careful about this and don’t say that.
‘But I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.’
Fauci’s absence at Sunday’s coronavirus press briefing sparked curiosity into his whereabouts on Twitter amid speculation that he had been banished from the White House.
One user joked that he was being punished for ‘disagreeing that blow driers aren’t a cure for COVID-19.’
His comments come just one day after he admitted he has been ‘walking a fine line’ by publicly contradicting Trump in an interview with the New York Times.
