Anthony Fauci’s confessions about his relationship with Trump: he threatened his family and received an envelope with a strange white powder | El Salvador News

Dr. Anthony Fauci describes a tense year as an adviser to former President Donald Trump for the COVID-19 pandemic, he says he received even death threats.

The doctor has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years, and has led one of the leading research institutions in the United States. But he has also been the advisor to seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to now Joe Biden, a figure who is approached every time a health crisis approaches to inform the government, address the World Organization of Health, testify before Congress or meet with the media.

Fauci says 2020 was disastrous, not only because of the pandemic and global devastation that COVID-19 was causing in the United States and globally, but because for Trump and his supporters it was an enemy of the nation.

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Trump supporters chanted “Farewell Fauci,” and the president openly reflected on the possibility of doing so. He was accused of inventing the virus and being part of a secret clique along with Bill Gates and George Soros to profit from the vaccines. His family received death threats. On January 21, in his first press appearance during the Biden government, Dr. Fauci described the “liberating feeling” of being able, once again, to “go up here and talk about what one knows — of the evidence, of science- and knowing that’s all, letting science speak. “

The New York Times published an interview in which Fauci describes all the difficulties he had in working with President Trump, here is a summary of the publication:

When did you first realize things were going wrong between you and President Trump?

It coincided very much with the rapid escalation of cases in the northeast of the country, especially in the New York metropolitan area. I was trying to express the gravity of the situation, and the president’s response was always leaning toward, “Well, it’s not that bad, is it?”. And I would say, “Yeah, it’s very serious.” And the other thing that worried me a lot was that it was clear that I was getting information from people who were calling me, I don’t know who, people I knew from business, saying, “Listen, I’ve heard about this drug, isn’t that great?” or, “Boy, this convalescence plasma is really phenomenal.” And I was trying, you know, to calmly explain to him that he finds out if something works by doing a proper clinical trial; the information is obtained, a peer review is done. And he would say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, these things really work.” He would take his opinion just as seriously — no data, just an anecdote — that something could be really important. It was always, “A guy called me, a friend of mine blah, blah, blah.” That’s when my anxiety started to increase.

Did you have any problems with him in the first three years of his presidency?

No, I barely knew who I was. The first time I met him was in September 2019, when I was asked to go to the White House, wear my white robe and stay there while he signed an executive order related to something about the flu. Then, from January, February 2020, it was an intense turnout; he went to the White House very, very often.

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There was a time last February when things changed. Alex Atzar headed the White House Special Commission on Coronavirus, and suddenly it was Mike Pence who did it, and President Trump was on the podium answering questions and arguing with reporters. What happened?

To be totally honest with you, I don’t know. We were having, you know, the kind of standard meetings based on science and public health. Then I started worrying that this wasn’t in the right direction: anecdotal situations, minimization, the president surrounding himself with people saying things that made no scientific sense. We said things like, “This is an outbreak. Infectious diseases go on their own course if nothing is done to intervene.” And then he would get up and start talking about, “It’s going to go away, it’s magical, it’s going to disappear.” That’s when it became clear to me: I’m not going to go out proactively to contradict what the president said. But he was saying something that was clearly not right, and then a reporter was saying, “Well, let’s listen to Dr. Fauci.” I had to get up and say, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s the case.” It’s not that I’m happy to contradict the president of the United States. I have great respect for the position. But I made the decision I had to make. Otherwise, I would be compromising my own integrity and giving a false message to the world. If he didn’t speak, it would be almost a tacit approval that what he was saying was okay. That’s when I started having problems. The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I dared to publicly contradict the president. That’s when we started getting into things that I found unfortunate and a little ominous, like allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say. Or that the White House press office sent a detailed list of the things I said that turned out not to be true, all meaningless because they were all true. The same press office that made the decisions about whether I could go to a TV show or talk to you.

Ever Trump himself called him or said, “What are you doing contradicting me?”.

There were a couple of times when I made a statement that was a pessimistic view of the direction we were going, and the president called me and said, ‘Listen, why aren’t you more positive? to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negative? Be more positive. “

When did the death threats begin?

Wow. Many, many months ago. In Spring. Wait, be patient with me. [Consulta a alguien que responde “28 de marzo”] So here you have it, from the head of my secret service. That’s when I got the protection, so maybe two weeks before that. It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that bothered me more than anything else. They knew where my children worked, where they lived. The threats came directly to my children’s phones, directly to their home. How the hell did these idiots get this information? And there were conversations on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, “Listen, we need to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do with him? He’s harming the president’s chances.” You know, that kind of crazy right.

Have you ever been shot or confronted?

No, but one day I received a letter in the mail, I opened it and a cloud of dust fell on my face and chest. This was very, very disturbing for me and my wife because she was in my office. So I saw it all about me and said, “What am I doing?”. The security team was there, and they have a lot of experience in that. They said, “Don’t move, stay in the room.” And they called people dangerous materials. So they came, sprayed me and all that.

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Did they do dust tests?

Yes. It was a benign nothingness. But it was scary. My wife and children were more disturbed than I was. I looked at him with a certain fatalism. It had to be one of three things: a hoax. Or anthrax, which meant he would have to take Cyprus for a month. Or if it was ricin, it was dead, so goodbye.

Have you ever considered giving up?

May. May. Nop.

Did his wife ever suggest he quit?

She brought up what she might consider. He’s an incredibly wise person, he knows me better than anyone in the world, obviously. He said to me, “Do you want to have a conversation to weigh the pros and cons of what you would achieve?” And after chatting, she finally agreed with me. I always felt that if I left, the picnic skunk would no longer be on field day. Even if it wasn’t very effective in getting everyone to change their minds, I felt it was important that they knew they couldn’t say nonsense without me opposing it. I think on the big picture, I felt it would be better for the country and for the cause that I stayed, rather than leave.

What are you going to do now? Four more years with President Biden?

I do not know. Right now I’m not thinking about how many more years. My whole professional life has been fighting pandemics, from the early years of HIV, the flu, Ebola, Zika or whatever. This is what I do. We are experiencing a historic pandemic, as we have not seen in 102 years. I think what I bring is something that has a lot of added value. I want to keep doing it until we manage to crush that outbreak, so that people can get back to normal. And even after that, I left some issues pending. There is still HIV, to which I have devoted most of my professional life. I want to continue the work we are doing on the flu, on HIV, on malaria and tuberculosis. Like I said, that’s what I do.

Let me ask you: Do you think Donald Trump cost the country tens or hundreds of thousands of lives?

I can’t comment on that. People always ask this and … establishing a direct link in this way becomes very condemnatory. I just want to stay away from that. I’m sorry.

First press conference with Biden: “completely transparent and honest”.

Biden is the seventh president of the United States to be advised by Fauci, who has led NIAID since 1984 and is one of the most respected figures in the country’s scientific community, a fame that has only increased during the pandemic.

At his first press conference under Biden, Fauci thanked the new president for instructing him to be “completely transparent and honest.”

“One of the new things in this Administration is that if we don’t know the answer, we don’t have to venture an assumption. We just say we don’t know the answer,” he said.

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During the press conference, Fauci also said that for now there is no confirmation that the South African variant of the covid-19 has arrived in the United States, while the British is already present in about 20 states.

All indications are that vaccines being administered in the United States and other countries protect against these new variants, but if injections need to be modified, this process “will not be too onerous,” he calculated.

The United States is the country in the world hardest hit by the pandemic in absolute terms, with more than 408,000 dead and 24.5 million infected, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Biden on Thursday unveiled his strategy to speed up the response to the pandemic, though he acknowledged it will take him months to “turn around” the situation he inherited from Trump.