President Trump’s last few weeks have been extraordinarily full of bombastic behavior, even by his standards. The COVID-stricken president literally went into a “ROID RAGE” while tweeting on steroids, fired a shot at the Lincoln Project, and shook his butt at a rally. Then he shredded the NIAID director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by taking a nasty swing at his competence. This happened after Fauci dared to publicly request that Trump remove a campaign ad that quotes him out of context — all for the purpose of making it look like Fauci praised Trump’s (botching of his) pandemic response.
In the aftermath, Fauci has all-but disappeared from public view, but that’s by not his choice. On Sunday night’s edition of CBS’ 60 Minutes, the immunologist revealed that he’s had enough of Trump’s shenanigans. Why did Fauci do so during primetime? As he told Jon LaPook, Trump has put the brakes on his media appearances regarding the White House Coronavirus Task Force. In the above video, Fauci discusses how he wasn’t at all surprised that Trump became infected, and he took off the gloves at the 4:00 minute mark. Here’s his reaction to Trump twisting his words out of context for a campaign commercial: “Quite frankly, I got really ticked off.”
Here’s more of what ticked-off Fauci had to offer about the ad that’s still running in certain battleground states:
“I do not and nor will I ever, publicly endorse any political candidate. And here I am, they’re sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad. Which I thought was outrageous. I was referring to something entirely different. I was referring to the grueling work of the task force that, ‘God, we were knocking ourselves out seven days a week. I don’t think we could have possibly have done any more than that.'”
Here are Fauci’s actual words that are being taken out of context: “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.” And as Fauci told LaPook of the twisting, it’s “stunning.” Trump also referenced Fauci’s baseball arm while attacking his competence adding several made-up claims about how “Trump was right” and saved millions of lives.
Actually, Tony’s pitching arm is far more accurate than his prognostications. “No problem, no masks”. WHO no longer likes Lockdowns – just came out against. Trump was right. We saved 2,000,000 USA lives!!! https://t.co/YyLyCsbZ7a
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2020
As one can imagine, Fauci’s receiving support on Twitter. And maybe a little bit of fear, based upon previous takes on Fauci’s public speaking voice.
https://twitter.com/BaseballFan207/status/1317973104505782272
https://twitter.com/medit8now/status/1317993941153841153
Fauci actually admits to being pretty “ticked off”. Mighty strong words for the good doctor!
Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was "absolutely not" surprised President Trump got sick after flouting social distancing advice. https://t.co/MdZiSpAeBm # via @HuffPostPol
— This is Now: Bridge 2 a Better World (@Bridge2Utopia) October 19, 2020
https://twitter.com/j_singpurwalla/status/1315796921303302151
I just heard Dr. Fauci speak for the first time and uh I was not expecting his voice to sound like a guy who would encase my legs in cement and then push me off a pier
— Rich Mintz (@richmintz) March 26, 2020