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A move by Donald Trump’s administration to discredit the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by accusing him of being frequently “wrong” about the coronavirus pandemic has been derided as “atrocious” by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
The Democrat told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the smear “is so characteristic of Donald Trump. He can’t stand the fact that the American people trust Dr Fauci and they don’t trust Donald Trump – and so he has to tear him down.”
“We need people more than ever to speak truth to power, to be able to level with the American people about what we’re facing with this pandemic, how to get it under control, how to protect ourselves and our families,” he continued. “That’s what Dr Fauci has been trying to do and by sidelining him the president is once again interfering with an effective response to this pandemic.”
“Dr Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” Trump had told Sean Hannity of Fox News in a phone interview last week, apparently trailing the tactic.
The West Wing subsequently submitted a statement to CNN on Saturday declaring that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr Fauci has been wrong on things”, giving a list of bullet points of public comments he had made that it disputed, which the network said, “resembled opposition research on a political opponent”.
White House goes after Fauci pic.twitter.com/YrKJNNMkLL
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) July 12, 2020
In some cases, the mostly anonymous aides appear to have taken truncated quotes out of context and overlooked other inconvenient statements to push the smear.
The White House is pitching Fauci oppo to reporters. In one example they tried to omit Fauci warning about community spread to make his comment seem worse. https://t.co/xtOAR6sK4X pic.twitter.com/guC8sxkZ80
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) July 13, 2020
“Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on,” said Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, with staggering gall.
Joining Schiff in his outrage over the matter was Kathleen Sebelius, who served as secretary of Health and Human Services under Barack Obama and told Blitzer’s The Situation Room that efforts to discredit Fauci and other scientists are “potentially very, very dangerous” as the US and other countries work toward a coronavirus vaccine.
“I think people want to know from the scientists that the vaccine is safe, that it is effective, that it will not do more harm than good,” she said.
“And if the public scientists have been discredited, if the president says ‘don’t believe them, you can’t listen to them, they’re often wrong,’ we have then undermined a national vaccination campaign which is an essential step to bringing this horrible period to an end.”
