‘Fauci is a good promoter’: Trump admits Fauci duped him
Trump added that he could have been tougher on the FDA and pushed back on some of their decisions but thought he was doing the best he could to save lives.
President Trump said in a new interview that he unwittingly enabled Anthony Fauci, allowing him to promote lockdowns and strict COVID-19 measures.
“Well, who knew that he knew so little? Anthony Fauci is a good promoter—he’s a great promoter,” Trump told The Federalist in an interview Friday. “He is a better baseball pitcher than he is predicting what to do with people’s health.”
The former president added that his administration handled the pandemic well but that he thought their messaging could have been better.
“One of the things that I’m disappointed about is that I think we did a great job with COVID,” Trump said. “With the vaccine, that’s such a game changer and nobody else would have done that. And I did something else. I went out and bought hundreds of thousands of doses before we knew that we had a vaccine. That was a big risk.”
Trump added that he could have been tougher on the FDA and pushed back on some of their decisions but thought he was doing the best he could to save lives.
“Nobody’s ever treated the FDA the way I did, because this was life and death,” he said. “I was really almost bad to them, but I wasn’t bad because I’m trying to save lives.”
The former president said the FDA was “incompetent but unbelievably bureaucratic.” Trump added he was particularly frustrated that the agency believed vital medications would take years to get approved to treat COVID-19.