Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), expressed his dissatisfaction with the Trump campaign for using a video clip of him in an ad, comparing it to harassment.
Arguing that being politicized by being featured in the president’s ads, Fauci said it would be “outrageous” and “terrible” if he were to be featured in another commercial and that it could “come to backfire” on Team Trump.
“By doing this against my will they are, in effect, harassing me,” Fauci said. “Since campaign ads are about getting votes, their harassment of me might have the opposite effect of turning some voters off.”
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Asked by the Daily Beast if he would resign if the Trump campaign continued to use him in ads, the NIAID director responded “Not a chance.”
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci told CNN on Sunday. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”
The ad featured Fauci saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more,” suggesting he was referencing President Trump and his response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Fauci, however, said he was actually speaking about the task force in general during the early days of the crisis.
Trump Campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh defended the ad in a Monday statement, saying: “These are Dr. Fauci’s own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth. As Dr. Fauci recently testified in the Senate, President Trump took the virus seriously from the beginning, acted quickly, and saved lives.”
Also on Monday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Fauci if the Trump campaign should take the ad down, to which the NIAIC director replied: “You know, I think so. I think it’s really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It’s so clear I’m not a political person and I have never, either directly or indirectly, endorsed a candidate. And to take a completely out-of-context statement and put it in, which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.”
“I hope they don’t do that,” Fauci added when Tapper said he heard a rumor that the Trump campaign was already planning another ad featuring Fauci. “That would be kind of playing a game that we don’t want to play. I hope they reconsider that, if in fact, they are indeed considering doing that. I hope they reconsider and not do that.”
He was then asked by the CNN host about his take on President Trump resuming his live rallies days after getting out of Walter Reed Hospital after testing positive for COVID-19 (for which White House physician Sean Conley said Monday the president has tested negative now for consecutive days).
“Put aside all of the issues of what the political implications the rally has and just put that aside and look at purely from the context of public health, Fauci told Tapper. “We know that’s asking for trouble when you do that we have seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks.”
“The data speak for themselves,” he continued. “It happens. And now it’s even more so a worse time to do that. When you look at what’s going on in the United States it’s really very troublesome.”
The “pandemic” has made a household name out of Anthony Fauci. One has to wonder if his newfound celebrity status doesn’t contribute to his constant opposition to having life return to normal. From saying that a focus on the decrease in COVID-19 death rates is a “false narrative” to calling for the government to be as “forceful as possible” on masks, Fauci seems determined to keep the country in a state of COVID panic.
Despite his claims to be a public health authority, Fauci has proven himself to be nothing more than a controlling person with a Napoleon complex. It’s time to take him out of the limelight and let healthy Americans move on with their lives.
