President Donald Trump is turning his focus to Dr. Anthony Fauci amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Asked what he makes of the current hotspots in the U.S., such as Florida and Texas, during a Fox News phone interview Thursday evening, Trump responded by appearing to shift the blame to Fauci.
“First of all, the mortality rate, and Dr. Fauci is a nice man but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” Trump said, noting the travel ban on China.
He continued, “But a lot of them said ‘Don’t wear a mask, don’t wear a mask.’ Now they are saying ‘wear a mask.’ So a lot of mistakes were made, a lot of mistakes,” before again touting, “We do testing like nobody’s ever done testing. And when we test, the more you test, the more cases you find.”
The president then said on younger people contracting the virus, “We have cases all over the place. Most of those cases immediately get better, they are people, young people, they have sniffles and two days later they are fine and they are not sick to start off with. They are asymptomatic.”
See Trump’s comments below (starting at 15:00):
Trump’s remarks regarding Fauci come as the nation’s top infectious diseases expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force shared with FiveThirtyEight his thoughts on how the U.S. is handling COVID-19.
Fauci pointed to New York specifically while noting that “there are parts of the United States … that are doing really well.” However, Fauci added, “But as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.”
The U.S. has over 3.2 million confirmed coronavirus cases with over 135,000 deaths due to the virus and more than 1.4 million reported recoveries, as of Friday morning.