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National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that he would “for sure” not agree to stay on as the White House’s top health advisor if former President Donald Trump were to win back the presidency.
In an interview on CNN, anchor Jim Acosta asked Fauci whether he would “trust” Trump’s ability to deal with a COVID-19-like pandemic and whether he would continue to serve as an adviser to the president. The official responded, with a chuckle, that he does not trust the former Republican president.
“Well, no to the second question,” Fauci replied jocularly. “The first question, if you look at the history of what the response [to COVID-19] was during the [Trump] administration, I think at best you could say it wasn’t optimal.”
Fauci and Trump in the White House
The relationship between the Trump administration and Dr. Fauci was tumultuous. So much so that as the 2020 election approached, the then Republican nominee suggested the possibility of removing Fauci from the White House coronavirus task force if he won a second term.
Shortly after Biden took the White House, Fauci criticized Trump on more than one occasion. In an interview with The Atlantic, the NIH director said the former president contradicted him on multiple occasions and belittled the recommendations of Debbie Birx, then coordinator of the pandemic task force.
“He didn’t undermine me, because I didn’t give a shit about him. I didn’t really care what he said, because my home base was the NIH. But Deb’s home base was the White House.”
Trump later responded by calling Fauci and Birx “self-promoters” who were trying to “reinvent history” to cover their “bad instincts and faulty recomendations.”
However, the former Republican president attempted to salvage his relationship with Fauci in 2021 in a Newsmax interview, saying he always got along “pretty well” with Fauci, even though he “usually did the opposite of what he wanted.”
Fauci recently told ABC that he had no intention of leaving his White House post until he”makes sure” the pandemic is over.
