- Now that Dr. Anthony Fauci is giving coronavirus updates as part of the Biden administration, he’s been making the press rounds and telling journalists how liberating it is to no longer work for President Trump.
- In one of his newest interviews, Dr. Fauci shares how horrified he was by President Trump’s comments back in April about possibly using bleach in the body to kill the coronavirus.
- Dr. Fauci is now the Biden administration’s chief medical adviser.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci is well accustomed by now to standing in front of a phalanx of TV news cameras flanked by political leaders and other health professionals and delivering the day’s latest coronavirus update to reporters. Serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 has certainly helped prepare the now 80-year-old doctor for the pressures of the role that was thrust upon him during the coronavirus pandemic.
What he wasn’t necessarily prepared for was working under a president who would do things like wondering aloud to the press whether ingesting a disinfectant could be an effective weapon against the coronavirus.
In a conversation Monday with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Dr. Fauci shared what he was thinking during that now-infamous press conference when Trump made those comments — part of Dr. Fauci making the rounds with the press, thanks to the Biden administration essentially unshackling him and letting him now speak his mind, unfettered.
Trump’s exact words during that April 2020 press conference were as follows: “I see the disinfectant that knocks (COVID) out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
“I just said, ‘Oh my goodness gracious,'” Dr. Fauci told Burnett about his immediate thought in response to the Trump disinfectant comments. “I could just see what’s going to happen.
“You’re going to have people who hear that from the President, and they’re going to start doing dangerous and foolish things. Which is the reason why, immediately, those of us who were not there said, ‘This is something you should not do.’ Be very explicit. The (CDC) came out, I think, the next day and put in one of their publications, ‘Do not do this.'”
Dr. Fauci has been giving a series of interviews in recent days, talking about how liberating it feels to be able to now speak his mind in the Biden administration. In an interview a few days ago with NPR, Dr. Fauci said it felt to him like a “hallelujah” moment, for example, when President Biden declared that “science and truth” would now guide the nation’s approach to fighting COVID-19 under the new administration.
