Trump’s
New Coronavirus Strategy: Trash Dr. Fauci
With zero strategy to contain the virus and
cases spiking across the country, the White House is working to undercut Fauci
while Trump retweets medical advice from a former Love Connection host.
BY ERIC LUTZ
JULY 13, 2020
Were it possible for him to do so without repercussions, Donald
Trump might already have fired Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
nation’s top infectious disease expert whose sobering assessments of the
coronavirus crisis have frequently undercut the president’s more fanciful
characterization. He can’t, though, so the administration is doing the next
best thing: Trashing the doctor in the media in a transparent effort to tank
his credibility.
Speaking to Sean
Hannity last week, Trump sounded a sour note on Fauci, who
recently acknowledged being sidelined by the
president, perhaps because of his habit of “speaking the truth at all times and
not sugar-coating things.” “He’s made a lot of mistakes,” Trump, who reportedly
hasn’t spoken to Fauci since early June, said on Fox News. According to the
outlet, the White House communications office scheduled several TV appearances
for Fauci this past weekend, but canceled them after the doctor said during a
Facebook live last Tuesday that America’s alleged progress against the virus is
a “false narrative.” The White House stepped up the attacks over the weekend,
circulating what was effectively opposition research—a list of statements Fauci
made during the early days of the crisis that turned out to be incorrect—to at
least one outlet. “Several White House officials are concerned about the number
of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” an administration official told the Washington
Post.
Like many experts in the
tumultuous first weeks of the virus’s spread, Fauci was incorrect in some of
his assessments, including on the importance of wearing masks. But he has also
been quick to correct himself, and his statements reflect the scientific facts
currently available. The same can’t be said for Trump, who has, among other
things, suggested coronavirus would miraculously disappear by April and could
possibly be treated with an injection of disinfectant or powerful light. He has
continued to downplay the danger of the disease, now pushing for schools to open this fall,
even as the country finds itself in a far worse position than it was this
spring. Until a photo-op at Walter Reed over the weekend,
Trump refused to even wear a mask in public, consigning protective
face-coverings into his boundless culture wars.
Fauci, once a fixture of
the government’s COVID response, but now appearing mostly on podcasts and in
print interviews, has been increasingly blunt in his disagreements with the
president, who, despite a death toll approaching 140,000 and confirmed cases
spiraling out of control, insists he’s done a “great job” responding
to the pandemic. “I don’t think you can say we’re doing great,” Fauci said in
an interview with
FiveThirtyEight, noting that other major countries have managed to bring the
virus mostly under control. “I mean, we’re just not.”
To most people, that’s
patently obvious. The premature state reopenings Trump encouraged have led to a
surge in cases, bringing hospital systems in hotspots to the brink and
portending a coming spike in deaths. Florida, the current American epicenter,
shattered the single-day record for confirmed cases on Sunday, reporting a
stunning 15,000 new cases in just 24 hours. To put that number in perspective,
the number of new cases the Sunshine State recorded just Sunday is more than the entire nation of South
Korea has confirmed during the pandemic in total. There’s no
indication that the dangerous trajectory will change anytime soon; as Florida
reported more than 25,000 new infections over the weekend, Disney World reopened to the public and
Trump-allied Governor Ron DeSantis tried to spin the numbers
into a positive, with his communications director cheering a decline
in the positive-test rate and the relatively young median age of those testing
positive.
Meanwhile, nations that followed the science have managed to
beat back the virus, paving the way for a potentially safer return to
some semblance of normalcy. If Trump, like Fauci, were capable of admitting his
mistakes, perhaps he would see that following expert guidance—a New
York Times poll last month
found that an overwhelming majority of Americans trust Fauci and other medical
experts over Trump—rather than pretending the crisis isn’t happening could even
help him politically. But even with a blueprint in front of him, Trump just
can’t bring himself to back down. Instead, he’s sidelining his best source of
information in favor of the guy who hosted Love Connection. On
Monday morning, Trump retweeted a conspiracy put forth by Chuck Woolery contending
that “everyone is lying” about the threat of COVID-19 to dim Trump’s electoral
prospects.
“I think it’s all about
the election and keeping the economy from coming back,” Woolery wrote, to
Trump’s apparent satisfaction. “I’m sick of it.”
