WH press secretary calls out Dems who say Fauci was 'blocked' from testifying in House: A 'publicity stunt'
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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded Saturday to questions as to why White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci was supposedly "blocked" from testifying before the House next week.
"In this case, [Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.] actually made several calls to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who I just spoke with, and the chief of staff repeatedly asked what the subject matter of the hearing would be," McEnany said on "America's Newsroom HQ."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Besides giving vague responses, she never gave too much detail as to what the actual subject matter would be other than it being a subcommittee for HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] funding, which would have been a rather odd fit for Dr. Fauci being that he's at NIH [the National Institutes of Health], which is a subdivision of Secretary [Alex] Azar's HHS. So when we pressed for details as to why Dr. Fauci, in particular, was the right person for this testimony in this hearing, those details were never provided."
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A House Appropriations Committee spokesman also confirmed that the White House had prevented Fauci from testifying as a witness during a subcommittee hearing on the COVID-19 response scheduled for next week.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The White House called such a testimony “counterproductive” in the heat of the pandemic.
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Anchor Eric Shawn asked McEnany about the news that Democrats replaced Fauci with Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"That's their decision. But they were not acting in good faith with the administration here," she said. "Beyond that, I'd also note where the Senate gave us their plans to social distance and how to do this safely. The House has yet to do that. So they're not acting in good faith. And this really was a publicity stunt on the part of Democrats saying that the White House blocked Dr. Fauci because that wasn't the case."
President Trump on Saturday tweeted that Fauci would testify before the Senate "very soon."