President Donald Trump on Monday shared a handful of social media posts questioning the expertise of his own public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and suggesting their scientific counsel was intended to thwart his political standing ahead of November’s general election.
In a burst of early morning online activity, Trump retweeted messages from the politically conservative former game show personality Chuck Woolery — who had stints hosting “Wheel of Fortune” and “Love Connection” — which lamented the spread of the “most outrageous lies” regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
“Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it's all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I'm sick of it,” Woolery wrote in a tweet shared by the president.
In another post Trump retweeted, Woolery claimed there exists “so much evidence, yes scientific evidence, that schools should open this fall. It's worldwide and it's overwhelming. BUT NO.”
Trump also retweeted a message from Mark Young, Woolery’s co-host on his “Blunt Force Truth” podcast, which asked: “So based on Dr. Fauci and the Democrats, I will need an ID card to go shopping but not to vote?”
As the United States has posted peak numbers of daily Covid-19 infections in the past few weeks, the president’s relationship with Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, plummeted to a new nadir over the weekend.
The White House reportedly told various media outlets Saturday and Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” and furnished a lengthy list of statements the widely respected immunologist made in the early days of the outbreak.
The type of smear effort launched by the Trump administration against one of its most public-facing, trusted members is traditionally reserved for political rivals, and came after the president expressed public dissatisfaction with Fauci in recent interviews.
Trump similarly targeted Fauci’s colleague, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, in a tweet last week that accused the public health agency’s guidelines for reopening schools of being “very tough & expensive.”
The president’s push to return students to classrooms in the fall represents the latest front in his pressure campaign for a broad-based economic reopening, in spite of surging Covid-19 caseloads.