The White House on Monday said President Trump has no plans to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci despite retweeting a social media post that called on him to do just that.
“This media chatter is ridiculous — President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci,” deputy press pecretary Hogan Gidley said. “The president’s tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to re-write history.”
Mr. Trump shared a post on Twitter late Sunday with the hashtag “#FireFauci,” leading to speculation he would oust the prominent doctor who directs infectious-disease research at the National Institutes of Health, has served six presidents and is one of the leading public faces of the federal response to the outbreak.
“Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up,” Mr. Trump tweeted, as he shared a separate post that said it was time to “#FireFauci.”
The other tweet was from DeAnna Lorraine, a former candidate for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat who received less than 2% of the vote in California’s open primary last month.
Her post appeared to refer to comments Dr. Fauci had made earlier in the day about whether instituting social distancing measures earlier on could have saved more lives.
“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,” Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But what goes into those decisions is complicated.”
“I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different,” he said. “But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
Corners of the conservative Twittersphere have scolded Dr. Fauci for weeks as being too willing to buck the president, with some claiming he’s part of a “deep state” that’s out to tank Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Mr. Gidley’s statement pointed to the content of the president’s tweet instead of the direct criticism that Ms. Lorraine lobbed at Dr. Fauci in a series of tweets that continued into Monday.
The president has repeatedly pointed to his decision to thwart the coronavirus by banning foreign nationals who’d been within China over the past 14 days.
He signed the proclamation on Jan. 31, or weeks before states and local leaders began shutting down parts of the U.S. economy and social life.
“It was Democrats and the media who ignored the coronavirus, choosing to focus on impeachment instead, and when they finally did comment on the virus, it was to attack President Trump for taking the bold, decisive action to save American lives by cutting off travel from China and from Europe,” Mr. Gidley said. “Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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