Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday tried to clarify comments he made in a Sunday interview about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, and said he used a “poor choice of words.”
At a White House news conference, Fauci, a health-policy adviser to Trump, said he wanted to clear up an answer to a “hypothetical question,” in which he said earlier coronavirus mitigation efforts would have saved more lives.
“That was taken as a way that maybe somehow, something was at fault,” he said. Fauci added that Trump approved social distancing the first time he recommended it. He said his statement that there was “pushback” to early recommendations was a “poor choice of words.”
“You could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci said on CNN on Sunday.
Fauci on Monday said he did not know the date that he and another official went to Trump to make a recommendation.
Earlier Monday, the White House said Trump wouldn’t fire Fauci, after the president retweeted a critic who called for the doctor to be dismissed after he said lives could have been saved if the administration had acted more quickly.
Trump told reporters, “I like him,” adding: “Not everyone’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody is happy with everybody.”
