- The Trump 2020 throw released a new ad on Saturday that included an out-of-context comment from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Transmissible Diseases.
- During a Fox News interview, Fauci praised the work of the White House coronavirus task force — not of President Donald Trump as the ad includes.
- Polls show that Trump has received low marks from Americans for his handling of the coronavirus.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more fairy tales.
The Trump 2020 campaign released on Saturday an ad that features White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci worshiping the president for his handling of the coronavirus. But the campaign took Fauci’s words out of context.
“I can’t imagine that…anybody could be doing innumerable,” Fauci says in the 30-second ad. His line comes after a string of images and narration in support of President Donald Trump’s return to the coronavirus, appearing to imply that Fauci gave his stamp of approval as well.
Fauci, however, made the annotation in a Fox News interview in March, referring to the long hours put in by the members of the White House coronavirus task force. Trump is not a colleague of the task force.
“I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the task force,” Fauci said in the Fox Despatch interview. “I’m connected by phone throughout the day and into the night and when I say night, I’m talking 12, 1, 2 in the morning. I’m not the only one. There’s a unbroken group of us that are doing that. It’s every single day. So I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing numerous.”
When asked about Fauci’s quote in the campaign ad, Trump 2020 campaign director of communications Tim Murtaugh lectured Business Insider that “It’s the President’s coronavirus task force.”
Fauci told CNN that he had not consented to being hyped in the ad and said his comments were taken out of context.
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly advocated any political candidate,” Fauci said. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a ungentlemanly statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”
The new ad comes with just weeks to go before the presidential plebiscite and also as Trump recovers from the coronavirus. He had been hospitalized at the Walter Reed Medical Center for a few days in preference to returning to the White House.
The ad, called “Carefully,” opens with video of Trump wearing a mask and features additional ideas and videos of seniors citizens and medical professionals.
“President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America. And together, we rose to go through the challenge,” the ad says, right before Fauci delivers the out-of-context line. “Protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving stimulants in record time, sparing no expense. President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should.”
Trump has beared low marks for the US response to the pandemic. A new poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos found that only 37% of respondents ventured they approved of his handling of the disease.
Fauci and Trump have often stood at odds on key issues related to the coronavirus. In August, Fauci required that the United States has seen surges in COVID-19 cases partly because the economy was shut down by at hand 50%, compared to Europe, which had almost fully shut down. Trump vehemently disagreed with Fauci’s notices.
“Wrong!” Trump wrote in a tweet. “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other boondocks, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors manipulated hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!”
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2020
The coronavirus has infected varied than 7.7 million people in the United States, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that, numerous than 214,000 people have died.