Dr. Anthony Fauchi, MD has won just about every award available to a scientist this side of Stockholm, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Nevertheless, if this weekend's oppo dumps are an indication, Trump has apparently chosen his target to take the blame for the horrid Federal response to COVID-19.
Let's get it out on the table. In the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic Dr. Fauci got it wrong. NBC News quoted an unnamed White House source dissing him by pointing out:
Fauci [said] in January that coronavirus was "not a major threat" and "not driven by asymptomatic carriers" and Fauci's comment in March that "people should not be walking around with masks."
The Washington Post reported a high ranking WH official as saying, "several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things."
Peter Navarro, White House Trade Advisor, is on the record saying he knows as much about things like the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as Fauci because he has a PhD in economics.
Taking medical advice from an economist is like taking investment advice from your podiatrist.
Next time you run into Navarro ask him how that China trade deal - on which he IS supposed to be an expert - is working out.
Fauci was wrong in the earliest days of the pandemic. So was Trump.
"You have 15 people, and within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
As of last night there have been 3,302,870 cases in the U.S., so Trump missed by a mere 3,302,855 infections.
That and his statement about injecting disinfectant
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"
That injecting disinfectant idea was so roundly ridiculed that the daily briefings were halted immediately, never to be seen again.
Those two moronic statements ill be reprinted for centuries to come as historians recount the mishandling of the pandemic of 2020.
A big difference between Dr. Fauci's statements and Trump's is when Fauci got better information he changed his mind. For instance he now always wears a mask, and I have seen him in a crowded stage on TV double-masking.
As Tommy Lee Jones' character, Agent K, says in Men-in-Black:
"1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
There are 113 days to November 3. I can't guarantee who will win the Presidency, but I can guarantee that COVID-19 will still be upon us.
Trump can read the polls. An ABC/Ipsos poll released Friday showed respondents disapproved of Trump's handling of the pandemic by a truly astonishing 67-32.
There is nothing the White House - even its amateur senior medical advisor Peter Navarro - can do or say to turn this thing on Joe Biden. The only foil in sight is Anthony Fauci.
When I write "in sight" I am being ironic. Trump hasn't "seen" Fauci, at least in the Oval, since early June. We are on the cusp of the Ides of July. The White House comms geniuses have forbidden Fauci from doing most TV interviews. The CBS Sunday Morning show has been trying to book Fauci for three months.
In politics it is considered a failing not to be prescient in all things. Changing course to match events in business makes you chairman of a Fortune 100 company. Good half-time adjustments in the NFL make you a Hall-of-Fame Coach. Changing your mind as a public official makes you a "Flip-Flopper."
Dr. Fauci is not a political appointee. He is, and has been for about 50 years, a Civil Servant and if you think firing a tenured professor at an Ivy League school is tough, it's nothing compared to a Civil Servant.
I don't know whether Fauci can be transferred to a Federal medical clinic in New Mexico, but I do know that in a head-to-head battle, my money - and my life - is on the 5'7" guy from Brooklyn.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The Wikipedia bio for Dr. Fauci, the NBC News piece on the White House attack scheme, and the Reuters page tracking the virus.
The Mullfoto today a fruit at Harris-Teeter that looks ominously familiar.
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