President Donald Trump called White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci a "disaster" as the number of COVID-19 cases in the US rises.
“People are tired of Covid,” Trump said in a call with the staff of his reelection campaign. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong,” he added.
Trump stressed that “every time [Fauci] goes on television there’s always a bomb,” referring to Dr. Fauci’s media appearances.
On CBS’s “60 Minutes," the White House health advisor said he was “absolutely not” surprised that Trump himself was infected by the coronavirus.
The president gave an explanation about why Dr. Fauci has not been fired yet as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“There’s a bigger bomb if you fire him,” Trump said. “This guy’s a disaster.” However, he mentioned at another point that Dr. Fauci is a “nice” man.
“He’s been here for 500 years,” Trump said of the infectious disease specialist.
Trump's insults
“Dr.Tony Fauci says we don’t allow him to do television, and yet I saw him last night on @60Minutes, and he seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late, great, Bob Hope,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions. He said ‘no masks & let China in’. Also, Bad arm!”
“P.S. Tony should stop wearing the Washington Nationals’ Mask for two reasons. Number one, it is not up to the high standards that he should be exposing. Number two, it keeps reminding me that Tony threw out perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of Baseball!,” Trump added.
In a statement, Eduardo Silva, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee “War Room,” explained that, “Trump claimed that ‘people are tired of COVID,’ and he’s right — they’re tired of him ignoring experts and prolonging a crisis that has already taken more than 219,000 American lives.”
“For months, Trump has lied to the American people about the coronavirus, and now, as cases surge and hospitals are again being pushed to the brink, he’s clearly learned nothing from the pain and suffering he’s already caused,” Silva said. “Americans across the country are paying the price for Trump’s disastrous response to the coronavirus, and the more he doubles down on this reckless strategy, the more they’ll oppose his failed leadership.”
“If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. “We’re like a rocket ship.”
Moreover, Trump criticized Democratic governors for implementing measures made to manage the second wave of coronavirus infections.
“Get the places open, let’s go,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in a statement, “Dr. Fauci is one of our country’s most distinguished public servants. He has served six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan.”
“If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat,” he said.
