Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci
testifies before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions Committee hearing to examine COVID-19, “focusing on
lessons learned to prepare for the next pandemic”, on Capitol Hill
in Washington, DC on June 23, 2020. KEVIN DIETSCH / POOL /
AFP
Top government scientist Anthony Fauci said Sunday that
an ad aired by Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was edited to
make him seem to endorse the president’s handling of the
coronavirus pandemic.
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never
publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci, the longtime
director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious
Diseases, said in a statement to CNN.
The 30-second campaign ad cites Trump’s personal experience with
the virus — “President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus,
and so is America,” it says — before including a brief clip in
which Fauci appears to praise the president’s response to the
pandemic.
“I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more,” Fauci is
shown as saying, creating the clear impression he is referring to
Trump.
But a complete clip of Fauci’s comments, made during an
interview in March with Fox News, shows the doctor saying: “I have
been devoting almost full time on this. I’m down at the White House
virtually every day with the task force. It’s every single day. So,
I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be
doing more.”
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In his statement Sunday, Fauci said, “The comments attributed to
me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of
context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts
of federal public health officials.”
As a leading member of the White House task force on the
coronavirus, the 79-year-old doctor has frequently had to walk a
fine line in attempting to clarify — or correct — the president’s
often incautious assertions about the disease or the treatments and
vaccines being developed against Covid-19.
Fauci has at times aroused Trump’s ire, as when the president in
April retweeted a message containing the hashtag #FireFauci —
before publicly insisting the doctor was doing a great job.
AFP
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