Dr. Anthony Fauci is continuing to speak out about what it was like working for the Trump administration amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci was a member of the White House coronavirus task force, and is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is now the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
When asked during a New York Times interview about working for President Donald Trump, Fauci said, “There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going, and the president would call me up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive.'”
Fauci also said, “He would get on the phone and express disappointment in me that I was not being more positive.”
Asked if he ever thought about quitting, Fauci told the Times, “Never. Never. Nope.”
“When people just see you standing up there, they sometimes think you’re being complicit in the distortions emanating from the stage. But I felt that if I stepped down, that would leave a void,” Fauci said.
He continued, “Someone’s got to not be afraid to speak out the truth. They would try to play down real problems and have a little happy talk about how things are OK. And I would always say, ‘Wait a minute, hold it folks, this is serious business.’ So there was a joke — a friendly joke, you know — that I was the skunk at the picnic.”
Former White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx recently shared that she “always” thought about quitting.
Fauci said during a White House press briefing on Jan. 21 that it is “somewhat of a liberating feeling” working for the Biden administration amid the pandemic, as IJR reported.
There has been an average of 170,559 new COVID-19 cases reported per day over the past week. This is a 33% decrease compared to the two weeks prior, according to The New York Times.
