Title : At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him.
link : At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him.
At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him.
You saw the conflict created in the media after Fauci gave an obvious, truthful, and not really controversial answer to a gotcha question aimed at him on "State of the Union." I'd seen the "State of the Union" interview and thought it was nothing, the kind of nothing that can be made into something, and I was too jaded to talk about it yesterday. I'd blogged about the Fauci interview on Sunday, emphasizing something else about it, and I didn't want to take the bait. Here's the snippet of the interview that became raw material for anti-Trump media:TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March?Trump himself poured fuel on the controversy when he retweeted this thing that happened to have #FireFauci at the end of it.
FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it's the what would have, what could have. It's -- 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. But 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.
Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
I blogged that yesterday, here, but didn't feel like saying anything about it. I was in my resistant mode.
Later in the day, I watched the press briefing, and then I wanted to talk about it, but I'm only getting around to it now.
Anyway — to the transcript of the Task Force press briefing:
Dr. Fauci: I had an interview yesterday that I was asked a hypothetical question. And hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty, because it’s what would have, or could have. The nature of the hypothetical question was if in fact we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved? And the answer to my question was as I always do and I’m doing right now perfectly honestly say, “Yes.” Obviously, mitigation helps. I’ve been up here many times telling you that mitigation works. So if mitigation works and you instigate it and you initiate it earlier, you will probably have saved more lives. If you initiated it later, you probably would have lost more lives. You initiate it at a certain time. That was taken as a way that may be somehow something was at fault here. So let me tell you from my experience, and I can only speak from my own experience, is that we had been talking before any meetings that we had, about the pros and the cons, the effectiveness, or not of strong mitigations. So discussions were going on mostly among the medical people about what that would mean. The first and only time that Dr. Birx, I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a “shutdown”, in the sense of not really shut down, but to really have strong mitigation. We discussed it. Obviously, there would be concern by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation. The next second time that I went with Dr. Birx into the president and said, “15 days are not enough. We need to go 30 days.” Obviously, there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effects. Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the health recommendations, and we extended it another 30 days. So I can only tell you what I know and what my recommendations were. But clearly as happens all the time, there were interpretations of that response to a hypothetical question that I just thought it would be very nice for me to clarify because I didn’t have the chance to clarify. ...Fauci was questioned about the expression of "concern by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences." The questioner paraphrased that as "pushback": "Where did that pushback come from?" Fauci had not said "pushback" at the briefing, though he had said it on "State of the Union." He answered:
Dr. Fauci: That was the wrong choice of words. You know what it was when people discuss, not necessarily in front of the president, when people discuss, they say, “Well, this is going to have maybe a harmful effect on this, or on that.” So it was a poor choice of words. There wasn’t anybody saying, “No, you shouldn’t do that.”Then he got a question that set him on fire: "Are you doing this voluntarily, or did the president...?" The questioner didn't finish, because Fauci angrily crushed him:
Dr. Fauci: No, I’m doing it…. Everything I do is voluntarily. Please. Don’t even imply that.The text doesn't convey how strongly he expressed outrage there, and I suspect that Trump was impressed by the doctor's vigor in counterpunching a journalist, which is what Trump himself insists on doing over and over.
And Trump steps to the microphone. He goes on at length about all the steps he took and when he took them He stresses that he wrote it down and "It’s all documented because we have so much fake news, I like to document things." It's like: I know you're going to lie about me, so I'm going to barrage you with facts. Excerpts from this part of the transcript:
Donald Trump: On January 17th to CDC began implementing public health entry screenings at three major U.S. Airports that received the greatest volume of passengers from Wuhan, at my instructions. There was not a single case of the coronavirus in the United States. So on January 17th, there wasn’t a case. And the fake news is saying, “Oh, he didn’t act fast enough.” Well, you remember what happened, because when I did act, I was criticized by Nancy Pelosi, by sleepy Joe Biden. I was criticized by everybody. In fact, I was called xenophobic... Now, on January 21st this is long before the time we’re talking, because when Tony’s talking, I believe he’s talking about the end of February. On January 21st, it was still early, there was one case of the virus at that time. We called it the Wuhan virus. Wuhan. There was one case in the whole United States. We had one case... There was just one case, one person.... I’m supposed to shut down the government, the biggest economy in the history of the world, shut it down. We have one case..... But CDC reported, January 31st not one person has died. And I issued a travel restriction from China. Think of it. So nobody died. And I issued, you can’t get earlier than that. So we have, nobody died. And I said, “China, you can’t come in. I’m sorry”, because I saw what was going on. Wasn’t so much what I was told, it was that I saw what was going on and I didn’t like it. But I didn’t speak to Tony about, didn’t speak to very many people about it. I didn’t like it... and I got brutalized over it by the press, because I was way too early. I shouldn’t have done it. Brutalized by the press, but I’ve been brutalized for the last four years. I used to do well before I decided to run for politics, but I guess I’m doing okay, because to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States despite the things that are said....That last line was delivered with humor.
Later the #firefauci retweet came up:
Donald Trump: I think Anthony would be the first one to say when I closed the country to China... Anthony said I saved a lot of lives by doing that. I mean, am I correct? I don’t want to put words in Anthony’s mouth, by the way, and I like him. Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy.The transcript notes "crosstalk," and it prompts Trump to say: "I retweeted somebody, I don’t know. They said fire, doesn’t matter."
That is the "#firefauci" part of the tweet wasn't important to him. He's asked, "Did you notice that when you retweeted it?" and he doesn't fall into that trap. Imperiously (or sarcastically), he says, "Yeah, I notice everything."
The next question is: "So you retweeted it even though it said time to fire Fauci?" Again, he declines to jump into the trap: "Well, no, that’s somebody’s opinion. All that is is an opinion."
The speaker persists: "But you read it, and you elevated it." The predictable answer to that is to diminish the meaning of retweeting — it's just a way to pass something along — and I'll just boldface where he's more or less saying that:
Donald Trump: Well, I was called about that. I said, “I’m not firing.” In fact, if you ask your friends in the public relations office, I was immediately called upon that, and I said, “No, I like him. I think he’s terrific.” Because this was a person’s view. Not everybody’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody’s happy with everybody, but I will tell you, we have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done....Dot dot dot because that's the shift to his preferred topic — the barrage of facts about what a great job so many people have done. The next question drags him back to firefaucigate: Are he and Dr. Fauci "on the same page"?
Donald Trump: Yeah, we have been from the beginning. I don’t know what it is exactly, but if I put somebody’s opinion up, I don’t mind controversy. I think controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing, but I want it to be honest controversy. Now, when I got a call, I got a call not very quickly, and nobody saw that as being any big deal. They said, “How are you doing with Dr. Fauci?” I said, “I’m doing great,” and I didn’t talk to Dr. Fauci even until we just got here. Dr. Fauci asked one of the people if he could get up and speak, and he did. [crosstalk] And they totally misinterpreted him. I saw what they did.I agree that Fauci was totally misinterpreted. I don't know if it's true that Fauci, completely on his own, decided he wanted to address the controversy at the top of the presentation and that nobody leaned on him at all, but Fauci has earned a lot of respect, so I'd like to take him at his word. He doesn't need Trump to back him up on that assertion, but Trump does back him up.
As for the #firefauci in the retweet, that's a strange thing. Was it an intentional prompt to Fauci — telling him to get out there and support Trump and don't let yourself be used in the production of anti-Trump material? I wouldn't put that past Trump.
Who knows what tricks Trump is reeling out? He is a media genius. I begin with that presumption. I certainly believe he noticed #firefauci in that tweet, and he had to know that his antagonists would run wild with it.
Maybe he explained his thinking to Fauci, and maybe Fauci accepts that public political speech is something that happens outside of his purview. I'm sure Fauci knew that — as Trump said, "Not everybody’s happy with Anthony." And maybe he understands that politics is complicated and Trump threw a bone to the anti-Fauci faction that's out there.
I suspect that Trump likes some chaos. It makes a better show, he performs well in it, and he thinks he'll rise to the top in the end, and I guess he's right, because to the best of my knowledge, he's the president of the United States despite the things that are said....
Thus articles At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him.
that is all articles At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him. This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him. with the link address https://usainnew.blogspot.com/2020/04/at-yesterdays-task-force-press-briefing.html
0 Response to "At yesterday's Task Force press briefing, Dr. Fauci and President Trump teamed up to fight the interpretation that Fauci is at odds with Trump and Trump wants to fire him."
Post a Comment