Fauci on What Working for Trump Was Really Like

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When did you first realize things were going wrong between you and President Trump?
It coincided very much with the rapid escalation of cases in the northeastern part of the country, particularly the New York metropolitan area. I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, “Well, it’s not that bad, right?” And I would say, “Yes, it is that bad.” It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it.

And the other thing that made me really concerned was, it was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, “Hey, I heard about this drug, isn’t it great?” or, “Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal.” And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.”

He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important. It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine, it was a variety of alternative-medicine-type approaches. It was always, “A guy called me up, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.” That’s when my anxiety started to escalate.

Did you have any problems with him in the first three years of his presidency?
No, he barely knew who I was.

There was a point last February when things changed. Alex Azar was running the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and then suddenly Mike Pence was, and President Trump was at the podium taking the questions and arguing with reporters. What happened?
To be totally honest with you, I don’t know. We were having, you know, the standard kind of scientifically based, public-health-based meetings. Then I started getting anxious that this was not going in the right direction — the anecdotally driven situations, the minimization, the president surrounding himself with people saying things that didn’t make any scientific sense. We would say things like: “This is an outbreak. Infectious diseases run their own course unless one does something to intervene.” And then he would get up and start talking about, “It’s going to go away, it’s magical, it’s going to disappear.”

That’s when it became clear to me: I’m not going to proactively go out and volunteer my contradiction of what the president said. But he would say something that clearly was not correct, and then a reporter would say, “Well, let’s hear from Dr. Fauci.” I would have to get up and say, “No, I’m sorry, I do not think that is the case.” It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK.

That’s when I started to get into some trouble. The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president. That’s when we started getting into things I felt were unfortunate and somewhat nefarious — namely, allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say. Or to have the White House press office send out a detailed list of things I said that turned out to be not true — all of which were nonsense because they were all true.

Did Mr. Trump himself ever yell at you or say, “What are you doing contradicting me?”
There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going, and the president would call me up and say, “Hey, why aren’t you more positive?

When did the death threats start?
Wow. Many, many months ago. In the spring. Hold on — just bear with me. [He consults someone who answers “March 28.”] So there — you got it from the head of my Secret Service detail. That’s when I got protection, so maybe two weeks prior to that.

It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that upset me more than anything else. They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes. How the hell did whoever these a**holes were get that information? And there was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, “Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.” You know, that kind of right-wing craziness.

Were you ever shot at or confronted?
No, but one day I got a letter in the mail, I opened it up and a puff of powder came all over my face and my chest.

That was very, very disturbing to me and my wife because it was in my office. So I just looked at it all over me and said, “What do I do?” The security detail was there, and they’re very experienced in that. They said, “Don’t move, stay in the room.” And they got the hazmat people. So they came, they sprayed me down and all that.

Did they test the powder?
Yeah. It was a benign nothing. But it was frightening. My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was. I looked at it somewhat fatalistically. It had to be one of three things: A hoax. Or anthrax, which meant I’d have to go on Cipro for a month. Or if it was ricin, I was dead, so bye-bye.

Did the president ever ask you for medical advice?
No. When he was in Walter Reed and he was getting monoclonal antibodies, he said, “Tony, this really just made a big difference. I feel much, much better. This is really good stuff.” I didn’t want to burst his bubble, but I said, “Well, no, this is an N equals 1. You may have been starting to feel better anyway.

Was nobody else advising him: “Hey, maybe we ought to pay attention to the science?” Jared Kushner? Mike Pence?
There could have been, behind closed doors, but to my knowledge there was not.

Later he joked with crowds about firing you. How did that make you feel?
I thought he wasn’t going to do it. I think that’s the way he is.

But then he brought in Scott Atlas and in effect made him your replacement.
Well, Scott Atlas was less a replacement for me than a pushing out of Debbie Birx

Did you ever think about quitting?
Never. Never. Nope.

Let me ask: Do you think Donald Trump cost the country tens or hundreds of thousands of lives?
I can’t comment on that. People always ask that and … making the direct connection that way, it becomes very damning. I just want to stay away from that. Sorry.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, revealed that she had no full-time team in the White House working on the response to COVID-19 under the former president.

In an interview with "Face the Nation" that aired Sunday, Birx said that she was "an N of 1" during her tenure in the White House as the coronavirus response coordinator. In contrast, she praised President Joe Biden for building a team of experts in testing, vaccines, data and data use, as well as a full-time supply chain point-person. During the Trump administration, those individuals existed "in different pockets of government," Birx said.

Birx, a former U.S. Army colonel and adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the Trump administration's structure meant that she was the "only full-time person in the White House working on the coronavirus response."

"That's what I was given," she said. "So what I did is, I went to my people that I've known all through the last years in government, all 41, and said, can you come and help me? And so I was able to recruit from other agencies, individuals."

help me? And so I was able to recruit from other agencies, individuals."

Among those she recruited was Irum Zaidi, who worked with Birx on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

A senior adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, who led the White House coronavirus task force, confirmed to CBS News that the staff who worked with Birx were from her days with PEPFAR, and that she put together that team. However, the adviser disputed the premise that Birx was denied necessary staff.

"There were 7-8 full-time staff detailed from other agencies to her. They were paid," the senior adviser told CBS News. Pence, meanwhile, was also given no additional White House staff, and his existing team worked on the COVID-19 response.

Birx spent much of 2020 on the road meeting with state and local leaders and said she and Zaidi wanted to determine what federal support states needed, as well as how they were interpreting guidance from the CDC. In private, Birx encouraged governors to disregard Mr. Trump's dismissiveness of mask-wearing and his pressure to reopen the economy faster than federal health guidelines would permit.

"That was the place where people would let me say what needed to be said about the pandemic, both in private with the governors and then in following up, doing press to talk to the people of that state," she said.

Birx said that she felt her science-based guidance was being censored by the White House and that she was being deliberately blocked from appearing on national media outlets for a time. By driving herself cross-country to meet face-to-face with governors, Birx said she could deliver her guidance and also understand why local leaders might be disregarding it.

As for whether Pence was aware of Birx's conversations with governors, the senior adviser to the former vice president told CBS News "he was supportive of the process but did not have a great level of detail."

Birx provided Pence's staff with regular reports, though the senior adviser said he may not have read them all and did not sign off on them. The adviser disputed the premise of censorship, pointing out that her written reports to governors were cleared through the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs prior to publication.