Dr. Fauci Is Over Trump’s COVID Contradictions As Biden Takes Charge

Fighting the coronavirus pandemic should get a whole lot easier for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, under the Biden administration.

Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and will continue to serve on the coronavirus task force under the Biden administration, said that working under the Trump Administration was often “somewhat awkward” as he often had to “contradict” what President Donald Trump said on national TV about the virus.

Fauci made the comments during an interview with the Harvard Business Review, saying that he took “no pleasure in that at all.”

During the interview, Fauci revealed how he made significant efforts to repair misinformation and contradictory claims Trump made about the virus.

"It's been particularly problematic here because that would often put me in direct conflict - not emotional conflict, but factual conflict - with what the president might say," he told the HBR. "So obviously that has not been an easy thing to do.”

But Fauci told the news outlet that he made a commitment to himself decades ago to “always stand by facts and evidence and never be afraid -- in a respectful way, in a non-confrontational way -- to say what the truth is.”

In the face of the pandemic, Trump has been criticized for going against Fauci’s assessment of COVID crisis.

At one point Trump claimed that the U.S. was “rounding the corner” of the pandemic that would just one day disappear. He also suggested that the heat of the summer would stop the virus, which Fauci countered by saying “it would be a stretch to assume” the virus would “disappear with the warm weather,” Business Insider reported.

Trump and Fauci also went head-to-head over hydroxychloroquine –- a malaria drug –- as a cure for the coronavirus. Trump said it was a “game-changer” while Fauci claimed it was not proven for treatment of the virus, Business Insider said.

Trump also wanted to fire Fauci in April, and the pair spared again in October over a campaign clip that was used without the doctor’s consent.

Fauci will continue his role under the Biden administration, which he told the Harvard Business Review, is “going to be doing things that have not been done before.”

Biden has said he has a goal of vaccinating 100 million people within his first 100 days of office and plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to supply more needles and syringes while also expanding partnership with pharmacies and community vaccine sites, according to Business Insider.