Trump retweets post with hashtag #FireFauci amid rising tensions, defends timing of his travel ban from China
Their relationship has always been a subject of media curiosity. Last month, the absence of Dr Anthony Fauci in some of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus briefings had raised eyebrows.
The top immunologist, a key member of the president’s task force, also said jokingly in an interview that he wasn't fired yet and it gave enough fodder to the media critical of the president to imagine how he treats even specialists in times of a crisis.
On Sunday (April 12) night, the issue came up for discussion again. The president displayed his lack of support for the infectious-disease expert by retweeting the #FireFauci hashtag and claimed that he had banned flights from China "long before people spoke up" hours after Fauci alleged that his recommendation for a shutdown in the country in February was ignored.
Trump and Fauci have had differences
Trump and Fauci have seen differences time and again on issues like maintaining social distancing, reopening the country or the vaccination for the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 22,000 people in the US — the highest for any nation in the world.
Trump on Sunday retweeted a post from former Republican congressional candidate from California DeAnna Lorraine that said: “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."
Trump not only retweeted the post but also added his own remark: "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up." He was targeting the New York Times that made a story on the latest differences between him and Fauci.
He also said in another tweet that he was criticized for moving too fast when he issued the ban on travel from China. Trump recently lashed out at the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) saying he hadn’t found its favor after deciding to ban travel from China.
It was recently revealed that at least 430,000 people traveled to the US from China since the deadly virus surfaced and there were not enough screening tests done at the airports in America.
Trump also said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told him "nothing until later" and referred to a January 29 memo from senior White House aide Peter Navarro who made quite an apt prediction on some of the challenges that the US faced from a potential pandemic though he was not the first one.
On January 31, a day after the WHO announced the virus as a global health emergency, Trump banned the entry of foreign nationals, who had traveled to China in the past 14 days then, to enter the US.
Immediate family members of US citizens or permanent residents were excluded. It, however, did not see the entry of people in direct flights from China coming to a complete halt.
On Sunday morning, the 79-year-old Fauci suggested that more lives could have been saved if the Trump administration had initiated a shutdown earlier than it was done in the middle of March.
"Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously," Fauci told on CNN's 'State of the Union'. "No-one is going to deny that," he said, but conceded that "there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."
Reports have revealed the intelligence alerting the White House last November that a virus threat from China was looming large that indicated that the commander-in-chief had knowledge about the impending danger.
Trump proposed coronavirus to 'wash over' US, says report
In another report from the Washington Post, Trump proposed to Fauci during a task-force meeting in March that they just let the coronavirus "wash over" the country and not go for a strong government response.
Two anonymous sources that knew the president's remarks told this to the paper. Trump was also reportedly seeking to know why "herd immunity" to the virus had been turned down. Fauci reportedly responded to the president saying many lives would have been lost in that case.
Fauci also said on Sunday that the US might be able to see a reopening in May but cautioned that a "rolling re-entry" would have to take place. He said it as there were signs that the pandemic was peaking.