Fauci says Trump dropped f-bombs during 2020 COVID call
Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci revealed in a forthcoming book that former President Trump dropped expletives during a 2020 phone call with him during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci recounted in a new autobiography that Trump dropped numerous expletives in the call just three months into the pandemic, according to reports from The New York Times and The Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast reported that the rants included Trump screaming f-bombs at Fauci multiple times, according to the copy of the book obtained by the outlet.
“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Fauci wrote, according to the Times.
“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars,’” Fauci reportedly said.
The Times noted that Trump also added an expletive in that phone call, according to the memoir. The chapter of the book discussing Trump in the early days of the pandemic is titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”
“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci continued, according to the Times. “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”
The Times said that about 70 pages are dedicated to discussing the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Trump was in office.
Fauci’s book, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” is 480 pages and will be released Tuesday. It reflects on his life experiences, including serving under seven presidents beginning in the Reagan administration.
He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly four decades.
Fauci was thrust into the spotlight during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has since been the subject of criticism from many Republicans who have taken aim at him over the handling of the pandemic.
He defended himself in front of a House committee hearing earlier this month, where Republican lawmakers grilled him over the government’s pandemic-era policies and recommendations.
Steven Cheung, Communications Director for the Trump campaign, told The Hill, “Mr. Fauci is desperately trying to rewrite history to cover for his bad instincts and ill-advised recommendations that President Trump overturned, which saved millions of lives. As President Trump has said previously, his bad policy decisions would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and put millions of lives at risk.”
Updated at 7:05 pm.
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