Dr. Anthony Fauci was the ‘skunk during the picnic’ in Donald Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, the top US health expert said in an open interview with the New York Times on Sunday.
More than 25 million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the US and nearly 420,000 people have died. The economy has cratered and vaccine deployment has not been smooth. On Sunday, senior officials in the new Biden government added to criticism of Trump’s reaction.
Fauci said some people assumed he was “complicit in the distortions emanating from the stage early in the White House Covid briefing”. He regularly clashed with the president, but said he never considered resigning.
“I felt it would leave a void if I retired,” he said. Someone should not be afraid to speak the truth. [White House staff] would try to play off real problems and talk a little happily about how things are right. And I would always say, ‘Wait a minute, hold it, people, this is a serious matter.’ So there was a joke – a friendly joke, you know – that I was the skunk at the picnic. ‘
Trump criticized and flirted with Fauci for firing him, but never opposed the very experienced and much-loved head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has served every president since 1984.
Fauci, 80, had previously discussed getting death threats because of his differences with Trump on topics including basic social mitigation measures and unproven treatments, including bleach, ultraviolet light and the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, all of which are being pushed by Trump as the death toll increases. .
Fauci is married to Christine Grady, the leading bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health. She, he told the Times, “told me I would like to consider” leaving.
‘And after a conversation, she finally agrees with me. I always felt that if I walked away, the skunk at the picnic would no longer be at the picnic. Though I was not very effective at changing everyone’s minds, and the idea that they know that nonsense cannot be expressed without me pushing back on it was important.
“I felt it would be better for the country and better for me to stay, instead of walking away.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, a doctor in the military known for her AIDS work who was Trump’s task force coordinator, also spoke at the weekend about why she did not leave a White House with “people who definitely believed.” [Covid] was a joke ”.
Birx is retiring soon. Fauci agreed to be Joe Biden’s chief scientific adviser, a role he said he felt was ‘liberating’. He told the Times he did not know how long he would serve the new president, who is only two years younger.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘all my life I’ve been fighting pandemics … That’s what I do.
‘I think what I bring to the table is something that adds a lot of value. I want to keep doing this until I see how we are crushing this outbreak so that people can become normal again. And even then, there is still HIV to which I have devoted the overwhelming part of my professional life. ”
Finally, Fauci was asked if he thinks Trump “costs the country tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives”.
“I can not comment on that,” he said. ‘People always ask for it and … making the direct connection like that makes it very damning. I just want to stay away from it. Sorry. ”