President Trump was heard on a Monday campaign call making rude and baseless claims about Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials.
What We Know:
- On the call, Trump said that the country is ready to move on from the pandemic, even though 215,000 Americans are now dead and cases are spiking again. He called Fauci and health officials “idiots” and said that his large campaign rallies were no problem.
- Trump also falsely claimed that “if I listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths . . . we’d have 700-800,000 deaths right now.” There’s no way to know how America would be handling the pandemic if Trump had listened to Fauci because this administration has not listened to health officials since day one. The only fact that we do know is that 215,000 people have actually died from coronavirus based on the Trump administration’s response and guidance.
- Trump also said that Fauci has given bad health advice concerning mask wearing and that he does not want to keep him. “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him,” he told campaign employees on the call.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots — these people, these people that have gotten it wrong. Fauci’s a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years. He called every one of them wrong. And he’s like this wonderful guy, a wonderful sage telling us how.” – President Trump
- At the same time Trump was blasting Fauci on the campaign call, Fauci was receiving the National Academy of Medicine’s Presidential Citation for Exemplary Leadership. While accepting the honor, Fauci said “We have a lot of challenges ahead of us and I can’t help thinking that we’re really going through a time that’s disturbingly anti-science in certain segments of our society.”
- Trump held this call two weeks before the election to offer some optimism and shore up the campaign in its final days. Trump told his staff that this is the most excited he’s been and that “we’re going to win”.
He also made the baseless claim that Democrats will be “cheating like crazy because they always cheat” and that “the only way we can lose this election is if they cheat. Okay, that’s the only way.”
