Dr. Fauci pleads with Donald Trump's aide to stop 'bizarre' smear campaign by trade advisor Peter Navarro - who is slapped down publicly by the president for op-ed saying doctor is 'wrong about everything'
There was a swarm internal division in the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday as the president publicly admonished a top aide who wrote a scathing op-ed trashing infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Trump's public rebuke of his trade advisor, Peter Navarro, came after a days-long campaign by close associates of the president to tarnish the international recognized epidemiologist.
'Well he made a statement representing himself. He shouldn't be doing that. Number one, I have a very good relationship with Anthony,' Trump said, as he left the White House for Georgia.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro penned an extraordinary op-ed blasting infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci
He offered unifying language despite the public fissure. 'We're all n the same team, including Dr. Fauci,' Trump said.
Trump's words came after the White House sought to disavow Navarrow's scathing op-ed.
Navarro penned an extraordinary op-ed in USA Today that accuses Fauci of being 'wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.'
The move comes amid escalating tensions between the medical expert, Medal of Freedom holder, and Trump and his closest aides.
Fauci hit back in an interview Wednesday, calling attacks against him 'bizarre.'
'Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,' Fauci told the Atlantic.
'When the staff lets out something like that and the entire scientific and press community push back on it, it ultimately hurts the president.'
Fauci termed the attacks against him 'nonsense' and 'completely wrong.'
'I can't explain Peter Navarro,' Fauci said of his politically influential attacker. 'He's in a world by himself.'
White House officials release a file of Fauci's purported 'mistakes' at the weekend, and Trump's social media assistant, Dan Scavino, posted a cartoon calling him 'Dr. Faucet.'
The op-ed catalogs a series of times Navarro - a former social sciences academic - claims Fauci has erred, including 'flip-flopping' on masks and downplaying risk from China.
'Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,' Navarro wrote in USA Today.
Navarro seemed particularly angry that Fauci has pushed back on the use of hydroxychloroquine, which Navarro has repeatedly pushed despite widespread skepticism from doctors and the CDC removing its emergency use authorization.
'When Fauci was telling the White House Coronavirus Task Force that there was only anecdotal evidence in support of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus, I confronted him with scientific studies providing evidence of safety and efficacy,' he wrote.
'A recent Detroit hospital study showed a 50% reduction in the mortality rate when the medicine is used in early treatment.'
In fact the Detroit study is itself being questioned by other doctors, while Navarro's purported 'scientific studies providing evidence of safety and efficacy' were also widely discredited.
He also attacked Fauci for warning that the mortality rate's lower rate is not to be seen as unalloyed good news.
'Now Fauci says a falling mortality rate doesn't matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can open.'
The public attack from a top official using his own name comes after other less overt attacks on Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and has been advising the coronavirus task force.
But the White House claimed Wednesday, hours after it was first published, that the op-ed was unsanctioned.
'The Peter Navarro op-ed didn't go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone,' wrote Alyssa Farrah, the White House Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant to the President. She was also press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, who runs the coronavirus task force.
Farrah wrote that President Trump 'values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his Administration.'
Farah didn't respond to a request for comment about whether Trump was informed about the op-ed in advance.
A White House official told the LA Times: 'Not only was he authorized by Trump, he was encouraged.'
A White House official told the Washington Post Navarro 'went rogue.' An anti-China hawk, Navarro wrote a memo warning about the risks of the virus even as the president and other top officials were publicly downplaying the potential impact.
The public slap from Navarro comes after anonymous White House officials trashed and produced opposition research materials on him for reporters. Longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino tweeted out a cartoon mocking Fauci.
The cartoon depicted Fauci as a leaky Faucet. The cartoonist, Ben Garrison, has been revealed to have been banned from a White House social media summit last year after being accused of anti-semitism for some of his cartoons, which invoke some of which invoke conspiracy theories involving George Soros.
White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, who is the director of social media for the administration, posted on his official Facebook page a cartoon showing Dr. Anthony Fauci as a leaking sink
Woolery, the 79-year-old original host of Wheel of Fortune, weighed in on the scientific debate, and was retweeted by President Trump
The president also on Monday retweeted former game show host Chuck Woolery, who blasted the Centers of Disease Control and claimed 'everyone is lying.'
'The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19,' Woolery tweeted to his 686,000 followers.
Trump defended his actions in comments to CBS. 'We posted a tweet that a lot of people feel. But all I'm doing is making a comment. I'm just putting somebody's voice out there. There are many voices,' Trump said.
Trump had also said on Monday: 'I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci. I've had for a long time - right from the beginning. I find that to be a very nice person. I don't always agree with him,' Trump said during a law enforcement event at the White House.
'I get along with him very well. I like him personally,' the president added.
That was after the White House circulated a document at the weekend noting that 'several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,' which was first reported by The Washington Post but obtained by several other news outlets including The New York Times, ABC News, and NBC News.
The document focused on statements Fauci made early in the pandemic, when much about the virus remained unknown, and was likened to opposition research done on a political enemy.
But, in a sign the move had backfired, a senior administration official argued it wasn't a White House memo on Fauci but a document that was merely sent out in response to reporters' questions.
'There wasn't a memo about Dr. Fauci,' the senior administration official told DailyMail.com. 'These were answers in response to questions. Not a document produced by the White House.'
McEnany made the same argument at her press briefing on Monday.
'We were asked a very specific question by the Washington Post and that question was President Trump noted that Dr. Fauci had made some mistakes and we provided a direct answer to what was a direct question,' she said. She did not address why the document was sent to other news outlets.
'We provided a direct response to a direct question. And that's about it .And to the notion that there's opposition research and that there's Fauci versus the president -couldn't be further from the truth. Dr. Fauci and the president have always had a very good working relationship,' she added.
