The Trump campaign released a new ad Saturday featuring infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as it looks to present a positive portrait of the White House’s pandemic response.
In a 30-second ad titled “Carefully,” a narrator notes Trump’s own recovery from the coronavirus and includes a clip of Fauci, the director of the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, touting the administration’s efforts to blunt the virus’s spread.
“President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America. Together, we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense. President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should,” the narrator says.
“I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more,” Fauci adds in a clip spliced into the ad, though the remark was actually made during a Fox News interview earlier this year and was referenced the federal government’s mobilization. It was not a direct reference to the president.
“We’ll get through this together. We’ll live carefully, but not afraid,” the narrator concludes.
The ad, is airing in Michigan where voters largely disapprove of the way the White House has worked to battle COVID-19.
Trump and Fauci have been at odds at times during the coronavirus response, with administration officials occasionally lambasting the infectious disease expert as overly cautious.
Fauci this week when he said an event he held at the White House was a “superspreader event” after several attendees tested positive for COVID-19.
Despite his own diagnosis, Trump has still sought to present a positive tone on the pandemic, urging Americans after he was released from the hospital to not “let it dominate you.”