AMERICA'S MANIAC MADMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

‘Everyone is lying’: Trump questions public health experts on Twitter

Sharing messages from a former game show personality, the president prolonged his feud with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

By QUINT FORGEY

07/13/2020 


President Donald Trump on Monday shared a handful of social media posts questioning the expertise of his own public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and suggesting their scientific counsel was intended to thwart his political standing ahead of November’s general election.

In a burst of early morning online activity, Trump retweeted messages from the politically conservative former game show personality Chuck Woolery — who served stints hosting “Wheel of Fortune” and “Love Connection” — which lamented the “most outrageous lies” being spread about the coronavirus pandemic.



“Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it,” Woolery wrote in a tweet shared by the president.

In another post Trump retweeted, Woolery claimed there exists “so much evidence, yes scientific evidence, that schools should open this fall. It’s worldwide and it’s overwhelming. BUT NO.”

Trump also retweeted a message from Mark Young, Woolery’s co-host on his “Blunt Force Truth” podcast, which asked: “So based on Dr. Fauci and the Democrats, I will need an ID card to go shopping but not to vote?”

As the United States has posted peak numbers of daily Covid-19 infections in the past few weeks, the president’s relationship with Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, plummeted to a new nadir over the weekend.

The White House reportedly told various news outlets Saturday and Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” and furnished a lengthy list of statements the widely respected immunologist made in the early days of the outbreak.

The type of smear effort directed by the Trump administration against one of its most public-facing, trusted members is traditionally reserved for political rivals, and came after the president expressed public dissatisfaction with Fauci for his dire assessments of the outbreak in congressional testimony and media interviews.

Fauci, who told the Financial Times last Friday that he had not briefed Trump for at least two months, warned at a Senate health committee hearing in late June that the U.S. could register as many as 100,000 additional cases per day if further safeguards were not put in place.

In a livestreamed conversation last Monday with his boss, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Fauci said the U.S. was still “knee-deep” in its first wave of coronavirus infections, describing the outbreak as “serious situation that we have to address immediately.”

But Trump was dismissive of Fauci in an interview last Tuesday with Gray Television’s Greta Van Susteren, saying: “I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him.” And speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last Thursday, Trump remarked that “Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.”

Top administration officials have begun to follow the president’s lead in piling on Fauci, including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who memorably sparred with the doctor in April over the efficacy of the controversial antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment.

“Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on,” Navarro told The Washington Post in a story published Saturday, adding: “So when you ask me if I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is only with caution.”

Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, said that while “I respect Dr. Facui a lot,” he is “not 100 percent right, and he also doesn’t necessarily ... have the whole national interest in mind. He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany addressed the friction between Fauci and his colleagues Monday on “Fox & Friends,” echoing Giroir and arguing that Fauci considers the pandemic response only through the lens of a “public health standpoint.”

“Dr. Fauci’s one member of a team. But rest assured, his viewpoint is represented, and the information gets to the president through” the White House coronavirus task force, McEnany said.

Increasingly ostracized within Trump’s federal government, Fauci did elicit declarations of support Monday from his peers in the medical community, who forcefully defended the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

David Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and Ross McKinney, the association’s chief scientific officer, said in a statement that the AAMC "is extremely concerned and alarmed by efforts to discredit" Fauci, who "has been an independent and outspoken voice for truth as the nation has struggled to fight" the pandemic

“Taking quotes from Dr. Fauci out of context to discredit his scientific knowledge and judgment will do tremendous harm to our nation’s efforts to get the virus under control, restore our economy, and return us to a more normal way of life,” Skorton and McKinney said. “America should be applauding Dr. Fauci for his service and following his advice, not undermining his credibility at this critical time.”

Fauci is not the administration’s only senior health official to have drawn the president’s ire in recent weeks. Trump similarly targeted CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield in a tweet last week that accused the public health agency’s guidelines for reopening schools of being “very tough & expensive.”

The president’s push to return students to classrooms in the fall represents the latest front in his pressure campaign for a broad-based economic reopening, in spite of surging Covid-19 caseloads.

The U.S. has notched records for new infections in late June and early July, with daily cases reaching 60,000 for the first time. On Sunday, Florida logged 15,000 new cases, surpassing the daily record reported by any single state since the start of the outbreak.

Although Trump ceded to bipartisan calls to wear a mask in public for the first time Saturday, during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center, he has remained reluctant to acknowledge the coronavirus’ threat as hot spots continue to emerge across in communities across the South and West.

He claimed in an interview with Fox Business earlier this month that the highly contagious disease is “at some point ... going to sort of just disappear,” and asserted during an address at the White House marking Independence Day celebrations that “99 percent” of cases are “totally harmless.”

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro claimed Fauci is 'wrong about everything,' as the White House seeks to discredit him on COVID-19

THIS MAN IS A FAKE ECONOMIST AND HE AIN'T NO DOCTOR WHO PROMOTES HALF BAKED ECONOMIC THEORIES AND QUACK MEDICINE

Tom Porter

President Donald Trump, left, with members of the White House coronavirus task force on March 9 including Dr. Anthony Fauci, second from right, and Peter Navarro, next to Trump. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Peter Navarro, a White House trade adviser, has criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force.

"Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on," Navarro said in a statement to The Washington Post.

In recent weeks a rift has opened between Fauci and the White House, with the expert in interviews bluntly criticizing errors in the US response to the pandemic.

According to The Post, Navarro has been lobbying against Fauci since the doctor refused to endorse the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, an unproven coronavirus treatment that Navarro and Trump had touted.


Peter Navarro, a trade adviser to President Donald Trump, has claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci is "wrong about everything" as the White House steps up its bid to discredit its own top infectious-disease expert.

"Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on," Navarro said in a statement to The Washington Post in a story about Fauci being sidelined.

He continued: "Now Fauci is saying that a falling mortality rate doesn't matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. So when you ask me if I listen to Dr. Fauci's advice, my answer is only with caution."

The president has claimed that a continuing decline in the proportion of the US population dying from the coronavirus is proof that his strategy has worked, despite an alarming increase in infections.

In a livestream press conference last week, Fauci said, "It's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death."

"There's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus — don't get yourself into false complacency," he said.

Last week, the death rate began to climb in several US states for the first time in several months. There is usually a lag between an increase in infections and in deaths.


Navarro's statement over the weekend came as an unnamed White House official also began circulating a list of old, outdated comments Fauci had given news outlets about the coronavirus, seemingly in a bid to undermine someone polling has suggested is one of the more trusted US government officials.

In recent weeks Fauci has delivered blunt assessments of US failings in response to the coronavirus, calling for states where infection rates are climbing to reintroduce restrictions.

His statements have contrasted with the upbeat message that Trump has delivered as he seeks to stimulate the US economy ahead of November's presidential election.

Navarro has long called for the government to rapidly lift the restrictions advocated by public-health officials such as Fauci. He warned in an interview with The New York Times in April that the damage done by the lockdown could exceed that of the virus.

Navarro is one of several White House officials to lobby against Fauci, according to The Post. The two fell out, according to the report, over the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which Trump and Navarro touted as a coronavirus cure.

Fauci, in public statements and internally, refused to endorse it, saying it had not been proved effective.

The Food and Drugs Administration withdrew its emergency permission for the drug to be used to treat patients after studies suggested it was dangerous for some, particularly those with underlying heart conditions.

Navarro, a China hawk, has also been accused of spreading political misinformation about the virus, claiming that China sought to deliberately spread it.