President Donald Trump stirred up speculation that he might try to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institue of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, after he retweeted someone who called for the firing of Fauci last week.
“I didn’t actually think that was likely to happen,” Francis Collins the director of the National Institutes of Health told Stat News in an interview.
He added, “So no I don’t think I was worried. And certainly, nobody reached out to me at that point.”
Collins added that he speaks with Fauci every night and does not even recall Trump’s tweet coming up in their conversation.
“Tony and I have a phone conversation every evening, sometime between 8 and 10 p.m., just to be sure that we’re completely in lockstep about all the things we’re trying to do with research. I don’t think we ever talked about that tweet.”
On April 12, Trump retweeted former Congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine who criticized Fauci for saying more lives could have been saved if mitigation efforts were implemented sooner, as IJR previously reported.
“Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,” Lorraine said, adding, “Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.”
Lorraine also included the hashtag “Fire Fauci” at the end of her tweet.
Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
Trump shared the tweet and touted his travel restrictions for China, “Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up.”
But the presence of Lorraine’s hashtag led to speculation that the president was upset with Fauci and might fire him.
The White House denied that Trump was going to fire Fauci, “President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci. The president’s tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history.”