Trump: ‘Fauci is an idiot, but I can’t fire him’

President Trump made striking statements about virologist Fauci during a telephone conversation followed by journalists.

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During a phone call primarily intended to whip up his campaign team against his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, President Donald Trump messed up well-known American virologist Anthony Fauci. Trump complained about the team of top virologists advising the U.S. government on the corona crisis, saying Fauci is “ one of those idiots ” who works there.

“People are tired of listening to Fauci and all those other idiots,” the president said casually, “but I can’t fire them. Whenever that Fauci is on television there is a “bomb”, but it would be an even bigger bomb if I fired him. I can’t fire him because of public perception. ‘

“Had we listened to that idiot, as many as 700,000 to 800,000 Americans would have died of the virus,” Trump concluded without substantiating his claim.

During the telephone conversation, some journalists listened. They were invited by Trump’s campaign team to provide exclusive coverage of the US election and the current president’s electoral battle against Joe Biden. “I don’t care, no, I don’t care,” Trump said when alerted to the presence of the journalists.

Mondmaskers

About 220,000 Americans have died in the United States since the start of the pandemic. Fauci was instrumental in communicating proposals for corona measures during the first months of the virus outbreak in the country. Trump publicly contradicted him several times and to date refuses to follow the measures proposed by Fauci and other top virologists – such as wearing a mouth mask.

Trump’s chief medical advisor is Scott Atlas. The latter saw his tweet about wearing mouth masks be removed on Monday by Twitter itself.

‘Mouth masks work? NO ‘, Atlas stated in the deleted tweet. The post also included a link to an article by the American Institute for Economic Research think tank questioning the effectiveness of face masks. Twitter said to the US channel CNN that the tweet was removed for violating the rules on spreading false and harmful information.

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