Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent interview that working in President Donald Trump’s administration was “somewhat awkward.”
Fauci told Harvard Business Review on Tuesday: "It's not a happy day when you have to get up in front of national TV and contradict something that the president of the United States says. I take no pleasure in that at all."
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump dismissed Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases, as “a little bit of an alarmist,” and said he “made some mistakes,” at the beginning of the outbreak in the United States.
Fauci, who has been the head of the NIAID since 1984, noted on Tuesday that he promised himself decades ago to "always stand by facts and evidence and never be afraid — in a respectful way, in a non-confrontational way — to say what the truth is."
He added, "It's been particularly problematic here because that would often put me in direct conflict — not emotional conflict, but factual conflict — with what the president might say. So obviously that has not been an easy thing to do."
Fauci went on to note that the upcoming Biden Administration is “going to be doing things that have not been done before,” when it comes to distributing the coronavirus vaccine, and that he expects to meet the president-elect’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people within his first 100 days in the White House.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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