Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is on the outs with the president. Fauci has said that he hasn’t seen Donald Trump since the first week of June; people in the White House are reportedly circulating material aimed at puncturing his public profile. “In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official said Sunday that ‘several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,’” NBC’s Josh Lederman and Kelly O’Donnell wrote Sunday. “The official gave NBC News a list of nearly a dozen past comments by Fauci that the official said had ultimately proven erroneous.” In an appearance on Meet the Press, the White House’s testing czar, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, said that Fauci “doesn’t necessarily—and he admits that—have the whole national interest in mind.” On Wednesday, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro went further in an USA Today op-ed, writing that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”
The White House has insisted that Navarro went “rogue” and his op-ed was not sanctioned by the administration. But Trump himself has been dismissing or contradicting Fauci’s more pessimistic remarks since the pandemic began. Last week, Trump’s critiques in interviews with Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren were pointed. Fauci, he told Hannity, “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” It’s true that Fauci, like many, initially underestimated the severity and contagiousness of the virus, but it goes without saying that Trump isn’t losing sleep over the accuracy of the White House’s messaging here. “Several White House aides view Fauci’s interviews as unhelpful,” The Washington Post reported Saturday, “and say they’re frustrated he has expressed interest in appearing on programs such as MSNBC’s ‘Rachel Maddow Show,’ which are hostile to the administration.”
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