President Donald Trump voiced his criticisms of Dr. Anthony Fauci during a call with campaign staffers on Monday. During the call, the President referred to the infectious disease expert as a "disaster" and called him an idiot.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, these people, these people that have gotten it wrong. Fauci is a nice guy, he’s been here for 500 years, he called every one of them wrong,” he rambled.
"Every time he goes on television there’s always a bomb. But there is a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci is a disaster. I mean, this guy, if I listened to him, we would have 500,000 deaths.”
This is not the first time the President has taken aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci. In April, Fauci criticized the former reality TV host's handling of the pandemic. In response, Trump threatened to kick him off the COVID-19 task force.
"Time to #FireFauci," the President tweeted.
Despite Trump's comments, Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to engage with the hotel chain owner.
“I would prefer not to comment on that and just get on with what we are really trying to do and what we are trying to do is to protect the health and welfare and safety of the American people predominantly, and ultimately, of the world," he said in a radio interview with a southern California AM station.
"We are seeing an uptick in cases — higher than they’ve ever been. Many, many states that had been doing reasonably well are now showing upticks, that’s what we should be concentrating on."
The back and forth between Trump and Fauci comes as the country crosses the 220,000 COVID-19 death toll mark. Thus far, the country has endured more positive COVID-19 tests than Russia, Brazil and Argentina combined. With flu season coming, the pandemic will only worsen. Researchers at MIT project that the country will have suffered nearly 240,000 casualties by the end of November.
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