Fauci walks back coronavirus comments that sparked fears of his firing
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/13/coronavirus-anthony-fauci-clarifies-comments-that-sparked-firing-fears.html
"White House health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday walked back his recent comments about the initial U.S. response to the coronavirus, saying he used “the wrong choice of words” a day earlier when describing “pushback about shutting things down.”
Fauci’s comments from a CNN interview Sunday – in which he said that more lives “obviously” could have been saved if the U.S. made earlier efforts to contain the virus – were seen by some as a critique of the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis.
Trump later that evening retweeted a call to ”#FireFauci.” A White House spokesman said Monday that the president “is not firing Dr. Fauci,” who “has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”
Fauci on Monday evening defended his comments, and Trump’s record on the coronavirus, while standing next to the president at the White House’s daily briefing on the disease.
“I was asked a hypothetical question” about whether lives could have been saved if mitigation policies were put in place earlier, “and hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty,” Fauci said.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that his response on CNN “was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here.”
“I’ve been up here many times telling you mitigation works,” Fauci said. “So if mitigation works and you initiate it earlier, you probably would have saved more lives. If you initiated it later, you probably would have lost more lives.”
Fauci said that the “first and only time” that he and coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx talked to Trump about “shutdown”-like mitigation policies, “the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation.”
When Fauci and Birx went to Trump a second time advising him to extend the White House’s social-distancing guidelines through the end of April, Trump “went with the health recommendations,” Fauci said.
Asked about his comment from the interview that “there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then,” Fauci said “that was the wrong choice of words.”
“When people discuss [the mitigation policies], not necessarily in front of the president but when people discuss, they say, ‘Well, you know, this is maybe going to have a harmful effect, on this or on that.’ So it was a poor choice of words,” he said.
“It wasn’t anybody saying, ‘No, you shouldn’t do that,’” Fauci added.
Asked if he was clarifying his remarks “voluntarily,” he replied: “Everything I do is voluntarily. Please. Don’t even imply that.”
metmike: Dang, there goes another fake news story(Trump is going to fire Fauci) down the tubes. There never was any chance of that happening...............except played out in the MSM manufactured reality based on a Trump tweet that was spun to have that meaning............even after the White House called it absurd and with no other evidence.
The White House response, as posted yesterday: "Trump was just trying to respond to a media "falsehood" about the coronavirus response.
"This media chatter is ridiculous – President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci. The President’s tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history," White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement."
metmike: So the MSM accomplished their objective again. They abused their freedom of the press rights to misinterpret something that made President Trump look bad in order to increase the hate which people have for him.............and it worked. The Trump haters took the bait(hookline and sinker) again and had another hate tantrum over it.
Funny how the MSM, instead of admitting THEY were wrong, are describing it as Fauci "walking back" (taking back) what he said-it's the headline above- and suggesting that Trump pressured him to do it...............despite Fauci claiming the exact opposite.
He is a revered authority if they think he is bumping heads with Trump but he is a puppet of Trumps when he says things good about Trump.
And you know its true!
