White House health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday walked back his recent comments about the initial U.S. response to the coronavirus, saying he used “the wrong choice of words” a day earlier when describing “pushback about shutting things down.”
Fauci’s comments from a CNN interview Sunday – in which he said that more lives “obviously” could have been saved if the U.S. made earlier efforts to contain the virus – were seen by some as a critique of the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis.
Trump later that evening retweeted a call to ”#FireFauci.” A White House spokesman said Monday that the president “is not firing Dr. Fauci,” who “has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”