Étiquettes
I have developed a strange affinity for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Donald Trump made Fauci — the 36-year director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has advised every president over that span — the hood ornament on this administration’s careening coronavirus Cadillac. Fauci is the face of SCIENCE in this fight, and from the sound of things, SCIENCE is about to get fired.
According to a number of sources, Trump has grown irritated at Fauci for the ever-increasing frequency of Fauci’s public corrections of Trump. Trump has been using the daily coronavirus briefings as a stand-in for his raucous, fiction-raddled rallies to spray dangerous, history-obscuring gibberish into the wind. He does not like it when Fauci, his own hand-picked face of SCIENCE, clowns him from the same podium. Because of this, Fauci may soon be gone.
The reasons for Fauci’s sudden cascade into disfavor are enough to stagger the imagination. I wrote on Monday about the capitalists jumping on television to demand the huddled masses get back to work. As it turns out, one of the larger cats in that particular tree — former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein — started yelling about this very thing before I’d written a sentence.
That’s not the worst part, however. This is the worst part, as reported by Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair:
Trump’s view that he can ignore Fauci’s opinion may be influenced by advice he’s getting from Jared Kushner, whose outside-the-box efforts have often rankled those in charge of managing the crisis. According to two sources, Kushner has told Trump about experimental treatments he’s heard about from executives in Silicon Valley.
“Jared is bringing conspiracy theories to Trump about potential treatments,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. Another former West Wing official told me: “Trump is like an 11-year-old boy waiting for the fairy godmother to bring him a magic pill.”
According to sources, Trump has been jealous that Cuomo’s press briefings have gotten such positive reviews. “He’s said Cuomo looks good,” a Republican briefed on internal conversations said. Trump’s solution has been to put on his own show. “Trump wants to play press secretary,” a former West Wing official said.
For the record, Trump’s devoted evocations of the gobbledygook Kushner apparently brings him may have already gotten one person killed. Trump has been peddling the anti-malarial drug chloroquine as a cure-all for COVID-19, even as Fauci and other experts try to wave him off because of the lethal side effects of this untested-for-coronavirus medication. Now, a man who listened to Trump on chloroquine is dead, and his wife is in critical condition.
I am pleading with you, one human being to another: If Trump says everything is fine because of his superior scientific knowledge (he has a relative who went to MIT!), if he says the coronavirus is gone and we can all assume a normal life again, if he dares to say that in the face of Fauci and science, ignore him.
Groupe Gaulliste Sceaux 