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  • 2020-10-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Fauci Praise Trump's Handling of COVID-19 Pandemic? (en)
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  • In October 2020, a campaign ad for U.S. President Donald Trump that supposedly showed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), praising the president's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic started circulating online: The narrator in the video says: President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should. The video then cuts to Fauci and shows him saying: I can't imagine that... anybody could be doing more. Fauci, however, was not specifically referring to Trump in this remark. It should also be noted that this comment, which was primarily aimed at the members of the COVID-19 task force, was made in March — seven months prior to the first airing of this ad. When Fauci made this comment, there had only been about 300 deaths in the United States related to the coronavirus. When this video first aired in October, there had been more than 210,000 deaths. The video clip of Fauci in this campaign ad was taken from an interview the NIAID director gave to Mark Levin on the Fox New Channel show Life, Liberty & Levin in March 2020. When Fauci was asked about the administration's response to COVID-19, he responded by praising the members of the task force for their tireless efforts. Here's a transcript of Fauci's remarks. We bolded the portion included in the campaign ad: Fauci did not mention Trump by name in his response to Levin's question. Fauci did, however, specifically mention the task force, and the team of people who were working around the clock to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly after Trump's campaign ad aired in October 2020, Fauci released a statement saying that his comments were presented out of context and that he never gave permission to be included in a political ad. Fauci said in a statement: In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh defended the ad, saying that the video uses Fauci's own words. Murtaugh said: These are Dr Fauci's own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr Fauci's mouth. While these are words from Fauci's mouth, they were misrepresented in this campaign ad. (en)
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