Senate Democrats parroted Dr. Anthony Fauci in their new fundraising email ,as the nation’s top infectious disease expert sat down for a scathing tell-all interview on working with former President Donald Trump.
The email was to congratulate Fauci for receiving the $1 million Dan David Prize. The prize recognized him for "courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging COVID crisis."
"Dr. Anthony Fauci was just chosen to receive the highly prestigious Dan David Prize," the Democrats Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) email reads. "We need 15,000 Democrats to congratulate him for this great honor."
The email comes after Fauci told The Telegraph that once he and Trump found themselves at odds over how to handle the coronavirus pandemic, Trump allowed things to happen "that were terrible."
"When it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things -- or allowed things to happen -- that were terrible," Fauci said.
FAUCI: 'NOT PRODUCTIVE' TO REHASH TRUMP HANDLING OF PANDEMIC
"He allowed Peter Navarro [Trump’s trade adviser] to write an editorial in USA Today saying that almost everything I’ve ever said was wrong," the head of the coronavirus task force explained. "He allowed the communications department of the White House to send out a list to all of the media, all of the networks, all of the cables, all of the print press, about all of the mistakes I’ve made, which was absolute nonsense because there were no mistakes."
Fauci had previously taken issue when the Trump campaign used his words in an ad. For fear of politicizing science, Fauci noted in his complaint about the ad that he’d never publicly endorsed a candidate.
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The infectious disease expert during the Trump administration tried to avoid public spats with the president. On Jan. 27, he said it was "not productive" to rehash Trump’s handling of the pandemic. He told Fox News he was uninterested in critiquing individual politicians, like Trump and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But as time went on, has come to speak with more candor.
Fauci told The Telegraph that in the final two months of Trump’s presidency he had pivoted from the virus to the election. "We [the scientists] were trying, but we were acting almost alone, in the sense of without any direction," he said.
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"My influence with [the president] diminished when he decided to essentially act like there was no outbreak and focus on re-election and opening the economy… That’s when he said, ‘It’s going to go away, it’s magical, don’t worry about it.’"
Thereafter "my direct influence on him was negligible. It became more conflictual than productive," Fauci said.