President Donald Trump unleashed an expletive-filled rant about the stock market not increasing enough when the first Covid-19 vaccine trials were successful, Dr Anthony Fauci has recounted.
Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts who helped lead the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic until through 2022, is publishing On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service next week. His chapter on working with Trump during the pandemic is aptly titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” according to The New York Times’ review of the book.
Fauci wrote the former president directed expletive-filled rants towards him when the stock market didn’t well enough to the Covid-19 vaccine: “The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him.”
“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” he continued. “He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’”
Fauci noted Trump added an expletive to his rant.
“I have a pretty thick skin but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun,” Fauci wrote, per the Times.
The physician also criticized Mike Pence’s support of Trump during the pandemic, according to the Times.
“Vice presidents are almost always publicly loyal to the president,” Fauci wrote. “That is part of the job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it. During task force meetings, he often said some version of, ‘There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person is upstairs.’”
Fauci notes other odd details about the former president, the Times reports, including that Trump once said he had never received a flu shot.
“When I asked [Trump] why, he answered, ‘Well, I’ve never gotten the flu. Why did I need a flu shot?’ I did not respond,” Fauci wrote.
Recently, Fauci was in the national spotlight again as he testified before a Republican-led Congressional committee about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the public portion of the hearing, right-wing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene inexplicably accused the top infectious disease expert of practicing “evil science,” calling for Fauci’s license to be revoked.
