Dr. Anthony Fauci says he wouldn’t want to keep his post as chief White House medical adviser if former President Donald Trump won back the presidency in 2024.
Dr. Fauci laughed and said “no,” when the possibility came up during a CNN interview on Sunday.
“If you look at the history of what the response was during the administration, I think, you know, at best, you can say it wasn’t optimal. And I think just, history will speak for itself about that,” Dr. Fauci told CNN on Sunday evening.
Dr. Fauci has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since the 1980s. President Biden elevated him to White House medical adviser under his administration.
Mr. Trump and Dr. Fauci showed solidarity from the podium early in the 2020 pandemic response, but things soured quickly, with Dr. Fauci accusing the ex-president of being too lax about precautions and fixating on unproven cures such as hydroxychloroquine.
In turn, Mr. Trump cast Dr. Fauci as an avatar of onerous societal limits and accused him of flip-flopping on travel bans and whether people needed to wear masks.
“Every time he goes on TV, there’s a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him,” Mr. Trump said in a call with campaign staff in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump hasn’t said whether he will run in 2024 but is teasing the possibility as he pulls strings within the GOP from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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