Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday evening that President Trump has “no intention” of removing him from the White House coronavirus task force.
“Well, it depends on what you mean by fire me,” Dr. Fauci said in an appearance on C-SPAN. “I’m on the task force serving at his pleasure. He can remove me from the task force. I was with him for quite a while today. He has no intention of doing that.”
“But obviously if it does … there’s a lot of competent people around. I’m sure they can get somebody to do that,” said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump had shared a tweet that included the hashtag #FireFauci, after Dr. Fauci appeared to acknowledge in a TV interview that instituting earlier mitigation strategies could have saved lives amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“This is the world we live in. You’re going to see things like that all the time,” Dr. Fauci said of the hashtag.
On Monday at the White House, Dr. Fauci sought to downplay any potential rift by saying that Mr. Trump never tried to block a recommendation to shut down schools and businesses to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
He acknowledged that using the phrase “pushback” to an earlier shutdown might have been the wrong choice of words.
The White House on Monday, likewise, said Mr. Trump isn’t firing Dr. Fauci.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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