White House advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci claims he was not invited to the White House coronavirus briefing on Tuesday.
The briefing was the first public briefing on the coronavirus pandemic in months.
“I was not invited up to this point and I’m assuming I’m not going to be there,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a CNN interview.
Dr. Fauci has become the subject of criticisms from the Trump administration.
In April, US President Donald Trump calls the statement on his alleged slow response to the coronavirus outbreak from Dr. Anthony Fauci “fake news.”
In May, Trump said he finds warning on reopening states by Dr. Anthony Fauci “not an acceptable answer.” The health expert says reopening could lead to more coronavirus cases.
It all started when Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said on “State of the Union” that earlier implementation of mitigation policies could have made a difference.
According to Trump, he was “surprised” by Dr. Fauci’s remarks during a hearing at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Trump did not indicate which statements he deemed unacceptable. However, he mentioned the doctor’s opinion about reopening schools in the fall.
During the hearing, Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed his concern about the lack of an effective vaccine or treatment for coronavirus when schools begin to reopen.
“In this case that the idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” he said.
However, Dr. Fauci, the US infectious disease expert, will not be fired, according to White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.
“This media chatter is ridiculous – President Trump is not firing Dr Fauci,” said Gidley. “Dr Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”
The “chatter” all started when Fauci was interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. He was asked if lives could have been save had social distancing been implemented by US President Donald Trump in February.
“It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that,” said Fauci.
“What goes into those kinds of decisions is – is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then,” he added.
Fauci admitted on Monday he used a “poor choice of words” when he suggested lives could have been saved had the government imposed coronavirus restrictions earlier than March.
“Hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty,” Fauci said in a statement.
