'I think you can trust me': Fauci stands firm as
Trump works to undermine him
Top expert hits back after White House’s series of
attacks – but observers say president’s barrage comes as little surprise
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Wed 15 Jul
2020 22.25 BSTFirst published on Wed 15 Jul 2020 08.00 BST
Anthony
Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases expert, has pushed back at a concerted
campaign by Donald Trump and his allies to discredit his response to the
coronavirus pandemic.
Officials
and advisers have publicly sought to undermine Fauci in at least five separate
instances over the past four days, even as the coronavirus surges across the
US, with the death toll now above 135,000.
“I believe
for the most part you can trust respected medical authorities,” Fauci told a
virtual forum at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday, responding to
a question that referenced the White House providing reporters with a list of
what it described as his past mistakes.
“I believe
I’m one of them, so I think you can trust me. But I would stick with respected
medical authorities who have a track record of telling the truth, who have a
track record of giving information and policy and recommendations based on
scientific evidence and good data.”
As Trump
downplays the pandemic, pushing to reopen schools and restart the economy,
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
offers bluntly pragmatic assessments that undercut the sunny message. Fauci has
said the two New Yorkers have not met since 2 June and the administration has
severely curtailed his TV appearances.
Last week
Trump told Fox News that Fauci made “a lot of mistakes” and on Monday he
retweeted a post by Chuck Woolery, a former game show host, asserting without
evidence: “Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all
but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and
keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of
it.”
Taking
their cue, the president’s lieutenants have worked to amplify their master’s
voice on different platforms. For an article published on Saturday, the White
House provided the Washington Post with a list of Fauci’s past comments and
predictions on the virus that it said were erroneous. It also made the list
available to other media outlets, prompting comparisons with the kind of “oppo
research” normally reserved for election campaigns.
On Sunday,
Adm Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, told NBC’s Meet the Press
programme: “I respect Dr Fauci a lot, but Dr Fauci is not 100% right and he
also doesn’t necessarily, and he admits that, have the whole national interest
in mind. He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”
That
evening, Dan Scavino, the White House social media director and deputy chief of
staff for communications, posted on Facebook a cartoon lampooning Fauci with
public health warnings such as “Indefinite lockdown!”, “Schools stay closed
this fall!” and “Shut up and obey!” It was drawn by Ben Garrison, an artist
whose work has been condemned for its antisemitic imagery.
A day
later, with momentum gathering, Stephen Moore, an economist and Trump adviser,
told the Daily Beast website: “We are working on a memo that shows how many
times Dr Fauci’s been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his
entire career.” The memo, he added, is currently entitled “Dr Wrong”.
Then, on
Tuesday, the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote a scathing op-ed in the
USA Today newspaper that said: “Dr Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with
the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him
on. So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr Fauci’s advice, my answer is:
only with skepticism and caution.”
The rush to
disown Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, and
earn brownie points with Trump comes as little surprise to seasoned observers.
Michael
Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Everybody
who wants to keep their job is going to play the game the way Trump wants them
to play it.
“And the
people who the president turns to to push out this narrative will do so, as
they have in the past. So all of a sudden now everybody in the White House has
a problem with Fauci. Why? Because the president has a problem with Fauci! You
take them outside the White House, they love the guy and think: ‘Yeah, listen
to Dr Fauci.’”
Trump has a
long history of resenting staff or spokespeople who come to rival him for media
attention. In the early days of the pandemic, the president was reportedly
disturbed by the coverage that Fauci was receiving. The White House has
drastically reduced his media exposure beyond lower-key webcasts and podcasts.
Sam
Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, said: “Anyone could have seen that this
was a relationship was destined to fail as Dr Fauci took a pre-eminent role internationally
in getting massive amounts of media.
“He was
also not someone who would necessarily be controlled by the administration.
Fauci was put on such a pedestal that any of his incorrect projections in the
beginning were glossed over and the media went to him as the alternative to
President Trump. So it doesn’t surprise me that the president and the White
House are less inclined to have Fauci in such a public role.”
Analysts
draw parallels with the all-out assault that Trump and allies launched on Robert
Mueller, the widely respected special counsel who investigated Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Kurt
Bardella, a senior adviser at the Lincoln Project, a political action committee
founded by Republicans working to defeat Trump in the 2020 election, said:
“When he
was appointed, Mueller had a very high approval rating and people across the
partisan spectrum thought that was the right guy for the job. Then, over time,
you saw a concerted campaign by the White House led by Trump to undermine him
and discredit whatever his report was going to ultimately produce. What we’re
seeing with Dr Fauci right now, and the president and his minions’ efforts to
do that, seems very similar tactically to what we saw happen to Mueller.”
The
relentless attacks on Mueller led to periodic speculation that he would be
fired, but Trump never proved willing to pull the trigger and face a political
firestorm. Fauci – who returned to the White House on Monday to meet the chief
of staff, Mark Meadows – may be similarly insulated. Even some of the
president’s closest allies believe he is a distraction from the real crisis.
Lindsey
Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and Trump ally, told reporters
on Tuesday: “Has he been right all the time? No. We don’t have a Dr Fauci
problem, we need to be focusing on doing things that get us where we need to
go. So I have all the respect in the world for Dr Fauci. I think any effort to
undermine him is not going to be productive, quite frankly.”
A New York
Times/Siena College opinion poll last month showed that two in three Americans
trust Fauci as an accurate source of information about the virus, whereas only
one in four trust Trump. Many regard the 79-year-old doctor as a bulwark of
sense and science at a deeply uncertain time and hope he can last the course.
Evan
McMullin, executive director of the democracy advocacy group Stand Up Republic
and a former CIA officer, said: “Trump’s approval ratings are in the dumps and
Fauci’s are very high. But this is part of Trump’s playbook, to bully someone
and to demean them, and most people will ultimately succumb to that because no
one appreciates that kind of abuse and no one can take it indefinitely.
“Others in
that situation might withdraw a bit and I’m glad Fauci hasn’t done that. The
country needs him to be speaking truth right now. People’s lives literally are
depending upon someone like Fauci telling the American people what’s at stake
and what they need to do to protect their lives and the lives of other
Americans. They’re not getting that from the president.”
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