Fauci: ‘There is certainly not a confrontational relationship between me and the president’

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, reiterated on Tuesday that there is not an acrimonious relationship between himself and President Trump. 

During a Senate Health Committee hearing with public health officials on Tuesday, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) asked Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir of the Department of Health and Human Services to comment on their relationship with the president during the coronavirus crisis. 

“The mainstream media and indeed some of my colleagues in the Senate seem to want to paint each of your relationships with our president during this wartime effort as confrontational and lacking consensus,” Loeffler said.

“Can you categorically say here to the American people today whether this is true or untrue?” she asked. 

Fauci responded to the senator, saying, “There is certainly not a confrontational relationship between me and the president.”

#BREAKING: Dr. Anthony Fauci says there is “no confrontational relationship” between himself and President Trump: “I give advice and opinion based on evidence-based scientific information. He hears that. He respects it.” pic.twitter.com/XXmoDgvtZ9

— The Hill (@thehill) May 12, 2020

“As I have mentioned many times, I give advice and opinion based on evidence-based scientific information,” Fauci said. “He hears that — he respects it — he gets opinions from a variety of other people — but in no way, in my experience over the last several months, has there been any confrontational relationship between us.”

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, questions have surfaced about Trump’s relationship with Fauci and other members of the White House coronavirus task force.

In March, Fauci said the media should stop “pitting” him against Trump when questioned on whether he thinks the media is trying to highlight differences between his advice on the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s opinions.

“That is really unfortunate,” Fauci said at the time. “I would wish that would stop because we have a much bigger problem here than trying to point out differences. There really, fundamentally, at the core … are not differences.”

In April, Fauci sought to quash any appearance of any fissure between himself and the president after a comment he made on CNN saying that more lives could have been saved if the federal government had moved more rapidly to implement social distancing guidelines. 

Fauci apologized, saying that his comments on the television network were a “poor choice of words.”

A reporter present at the press briefing at the time asked Fauci if his clarifications were voluntary. 

“Everything I do is voluntarily,” Fauci said. “Please, don’t even imply that.”