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Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the Trump Administration's point players on the Coronavirus Task Force, is sick and tired of media jackals trying to pit him against the president and create division, discord, and distrust within the president's team and the American people.
Fauci appeared on "Mornings on the Mall" on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning and he spoke passionately about how the media has mischaracterized his relationship with the president and has tried to drive a wedge between them.
"It seems like increasingly a bunch of the questions from the media are designed to create a rift between you and the president of the United States," asked co-host Vince Coglianese, "are you sensing that as the media continually asks you questions about the differences you have with him?"
"That is really unfortunate. I would wish that that would stop because we have a much bigger problem here than trying to point out differences," Fauci said. "There really, fundamentally at the core when you look at things, there are not differences. The president has listened to what I have said and what the other people on the task force have said. When I've made recommendations, he has taken them. He has never countered or overridden me. The idea of pitting one against the other is just not helpful. I wish that would stop and we'd look ahead at the challenge we have to pull together to get over this thing."
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In the same interview, Fauci noted that his responsibility is to solely focus on defeating the disease while the president has a larger responsibility. "The president has the awesome responsibility of considering every aspect of this," he said. "I just give public health advice completely clean, unconnected with anything else. He has to factor in other things."
"What the president is trying to do is balance the public health issues with the fact this is having an enormous impact on the economy of the country which may actually, indirectly, cause an incredible amount of harm... even health-wise," Fauci noted.
Dr. Fauci is a good man. He is a scientific man. He doesn't realize that the mainstream media has a larger focus right now that goes well beyond defeating the spread of a disease or to keep our economy afloat in these extraordinary times. They have bigger fish to fry... they have an election to win.
And although it would be nice for reporters and the vast majority of media outlets to stop trying to sow division within the ranks of the president's task force, that would be counterproductive to their goal of destroying Donald Trump.
So they will continue to pit him against the president. And they will continue to pit one American against another.
Let's pray Dr. Fauci stops watching cable news, stops reading The New York Times and Washington Post and stops giving interviews to reporters who are more interested in politics than infectious diseases.
Listen to the entire interview right here:
Larry O'Connor hosts two separate radio programs on WMAL in Washington DC and on KABC in Los Angeles. He has a daily, 30-minute podcast covering U.S. Politics and featuring interviews with newsmakers and pundits on the biggest stories of the day. Subscribe here.
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