The White House denied claims that United States President Donald Trump had any intention of firing the administration's top infectious disease specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci after he had retweeted a call to fire the virologist.
US President Donald Trump on Monday retweeted a call for the firing of Dr Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The tweet sent out by former Congress candidate DeAnna Lorraine (@DeAnna4Congress) had come after who is leading the US administration’s coronavirus response in an interview with
Fauci in the interview had said that implementing social distancing and stay-at-home orders early on could have reduced the impact of the outbreak. However, he had also added that making the decision to impose these restrictions back then was “complicated.”
“Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29 that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci…” Lorraine had tweeted.
The tweet was later retweeted by President Trump with the caption “Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN.”
This had led to speculations about Trump’s intention regarding firing Dr Fauci.
The White House had later said that Trump had no intentions of firing Fauci who “remains a trusted advisor to President Trump," according to a Reuters report.
The US, last week, had seen the death toll from Covid-19 peak in the country with almost 2,000 deaths on an average each day for four consecutive days. The worst impacted city in the US is New York. US President Trump has been criticized regarding his response to the pandemic in the country by experts owing to the rising number of cases and the high death toll from the virus.
Trump at a White House news conference on Monday had said that he was very close to completing a plan to reopen the country “hopefully even ahead of schedule," according to a Reuters report.
As global infections have crossed the two-million mark, the US as of Tuesday morning had reported over 5.8 lakh cases of Covid-19 with more than 23,000 deaths.