Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday he skipped former President Donald Trump’s ludicrous 2020 briefing on disinfectant as a potential cure for COVID-19 after a premonition that the presentation would “go bad.” (Watch the video below.)
Fauci, who’s stepping down as the chief medical adviser to the president in December, said he was in the White House at the time of Trump’s TV appearance in April 2020 and purposely avoided it.
“I had a bad feeling,” Fauci told ABC News in an “exit interview.”
Fauci, who’s also vacating his directorship at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the network’s Jonathan Karl that a Homeland Security report on the effects of light on the virus beforehand set off his inner alarm, the Daily Beast noted.
“As soon as I heard it I said, ‘Holy shit, this is gonna go bad,’” Fauci said. “‘Why don’t I bow out of this one.’”
The doc’s fear that quackery was afoot came true.
“Holy shit, this is gonna go bad” — Fauci tells ABC that he had a “bad feeling” on day of briefing when Trump suggested injecting disinfectant could be Covid cure, says had he been there he would’ve tried to cut Trump off pic.twitter.com/eAXonYDQbN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2022
In remarks that Karl called “most surreal” and HuffPost called the “most insane,” Trump spoke of possibly injecting disinfectant to kill the virus. (Trump later tried to claim he was being sarcastic.)
Dr. Deborah Birx, another adviser on the task force, had the misfortune of being there. She later said she was “paralyzed” by the president’s words.
Fauci told ABC he would have called timeout on the moment, signaling with his hands like a football coach.
Fauci had previously reflected on that day, saying he grew concerned about the proceedings before they happened.
“I just said, ‘Oh, my goodness gracious,’” Fauci told CNN last year. “I could just see what’s going to happen: You’re going to have people who hear that from the president and they’re going to start doing dangerous and foolish things.”
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