President Donald Trump sounded off on Dr. Anthony Fauci on Truth Social as a highly anticipated hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is underway.
Trump reflected on the COVID-19 response from the White House during his first term in office, especially as the former public health official will be heavily scrutinized in light of his diary entries being released. The president said that he had contacted then-President Joe Biden “to tell him Fauci was no good, either didn’t have a clue, or was dishonest.”
“Many more people died of Covid under the Biden Administration than under the Trump Administration. ‘Operation Warp Speed’ was a SPECTACULAR SUCCESS, in fact, many say, one of the most successful things ever done by an American President. I overrode Fauci on this,” Trump wrote on Wednesday morning, calling Fauci’s ideas “CRAZY!” and said that they “strongly disagreed” on the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
“I Inherited Fauci, who was there since the 1980’s, but with each passing day, relied less and less on him. He made too many bad calls, like on MASKS. Remember at the beginning he was an anti-masker. He then switched to a super-masker. In any event I didn’t let him shut the Country down, although he wanted to,” Trump continued.
The president then recapped that he "let the governors decide” how to best respond to the pandemic, and said that Republican leaders “did a much better job.”
“Fauci was largely taken out of play, and then along came Sleepy Joe Biden, who made Fauci a ‘King!’”
On the aforementioned call, Trump said it was “well received, but sadly, not acted on.”
“Biden went on to give Fauci vast destructive power. The rest is history!” he wrote.
During the hearing, Fauci pledged to plead the Fifth Amendment to Chairman Rand Paul's (R-KY) questions "on the advice of counsel."