Trump Ignites Speculation by Retweeting 'Fire Fauci' Message
President Donald Trump on Sunday re-ignited speculation of a tiff with infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci by retweeting a message that included the hashtag “fireFauci.”
On Sunday, Trump retweeted a post from DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican who last month lost a primary to oppose House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in California’s 12th Congressional District.
“Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci,” Lorraine tweeted.
Trump retweeted the message, adding his own comment.
“Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up,” he tweeted.
Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
Lorraine has freely used her Twitter account to criticize Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Now Fauci is saying that he can’t guarantee we can have physical voting in November.
And so the mask comes off fully.
If it walks and talks like a Democrat operative, chances are it is a Democrat operative.#FireFauci
— DeAnna Lorraine ?? (@DeAnna4Congress) April 13, 2020
In the 2016 election cycle, Dr. Fauci’s wife donated to a presidential candidate.
It’s documented.
Can anyone guess who she donated to?#FireFauci
— DeAnna Lorraine ?? (@DeAnna4Congress) April 13, 2020
Fauci appeared Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” and was asked by host Jake Tapper why it was that although South Korea and the U.S. were hit by the virus at the same time, South Korea was much less hard-hit.
Tapper asked Fauci if he supported an argument made by Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, that the reason was that the U.S. had acted too slowly at the start of the outbreak.
“You know, it isn’t as simple as that, Jake. I’m sorry. I mean, to just say this is all happening because we got started too late, obviously, if you look, could you have done something a little bit earlier, it would have had an impact, obviously. But where we are right now is the result of a number of factors: the size of the country, the heterogeneity of the country,” Fauci responded.
“It’s — I think it’s a little bit unfair to compare us to South Korea, where they had an outbreak in Daegu, and they had the capability of immediately, essentially, shutting it off completely in a way that we may not have been able to do in this country,” he went on.
“So, obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don’t think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor. It’s very complicated, Jake.”
Tapper then referenced a report in The New York Times that cited Fauci as among the health experts who wanted some form of national shutdown in February.
“You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now,” Fauci said.
The doctor sought to dance around a definitive statement of what might have happened looking back.
“You know, Jake, again, it’s the ‘what would have, what could have.’ It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that,” he said.
“But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
In the past, Fauci has pushed back against media accounts that claim there is a rift between him and Trump.
“I take the tack that I will say what’s true and whatever happens, happens. As a matter of fact, in fairness to him, the president has listened very carefully to what I’ve said. He’s taken my recommendations almost invariably, and he has never really contradicted things that I have recommended to him. He listens,” he said in a March interview with Vanity Fair.
“I mean, there’s a lot out there in the press about conflict between the both of us. There’s absolutely none. There really isn’t,” Fauci said.
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