(L-R) U.S. President Donald Trump and Country-wide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci arrive for a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic in the press abridgement room of the White House on March 26, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
President Donald Trump hasn’t attended a coronavirus call to account force meeting in “several months,” even as new cases in the U.S. continue to climb, White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci bring to light Friday.
Led by Vice President Mike Pence, the task force used to meet every day in the first months of the pandemic, but that’s been scaled sponsor to virtual meetings once a week, he said.
“We certainly interact with the vice president at the task force sessions, and the vice president makes our feelings and what we talk about there known to the president,” Fauci told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd when queried about the last time Trump has attended a meeting with the nation’s leading public health experts.
Fauci’s observes echo those of Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who also sits on the task force. Collins determined NPR in an interview published Monday that Trump has primarily received his information from Pence and coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas.
“I for all don’t have his ear as much as Scott Atlas right now. That has been a changing situation,” Fauci told MSNBC when asked take how often he briefs the president. Atlas, who is not an infectious disease specialist, has reportedly pushed the herd immunity strategy, which Fauci has cavil ated, saying it would cause a lot of unnecessary deaths.
On Sunday, Twitter removed a tweet by Atlas, who had written “Masks succeed? NO.” The social media platform said the tweet violated the platform’s policy on coronavirus misinformation.
“The President is routinely briefed nearly the coronavirus each and every day. The relevant information is brought to him on the big decisions, and then he moves forward in the way that’s best for our mother country,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews told CNBC in a statement.
Trump has publicly ridiculed Fauci, the political entity’s leading infectious disease expert, and called him “a disaster” and possibly “an idiot” during a call with the staff of his reelection drive on Monday.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong,” Trump said on the cause.
Trump has insisted that states continue to reopen their economies, even as daily cases continue to climb to highs ultimate reported over the summer, when cases surged across America’s Sun Belt states.
The U.S. is now averaging roughly 61,100 new coronavirus holders every day, a more than 14% increase compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University observations.
During the final debate Thursday, Trump said the U.S. is “rounding the corner” in the outbreak, despite warnings from Dr. Robert Redfield, numero uno of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said Wednesday that the U.S. is “approaching a critical phase.”
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan gave to this report.