Biden slams Trump for calling Fauci a ‘disaster’

Former Vice President Joe Biden slammed President Trump on Monday for calling Anthony Fauci a “disaster” and dismissing public health experts, accusing the president of “waving a white flag” in the country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

“Coronavirus infections are spiking across the country, but President Trump decided to attack Dr. Fauci again today as a ‘disaster’ and call public health experts ‘idiots’ instead of laying out a plan to beat this virus or heeding their advice about how we can save lives and get our economy moving again,” Biden said in a statement.

“Waving a white flag and saying ‘it is what it is’ is unacceptable when thousands of American lives are being taken each week, when businesses are closing and schools remain shuttered,” he continued. “The American people have never backed down from a challenge, but they need a leader to show the way and all President Trump has done is cower and wallow in self-pity.”

Biden’s statement came hours after Trump attacked Fauci during a conference call with campaign staffers, audio of which was obtained by The Hill. In the call, Trump accused the nation’s top infectious diseases specialist of giving inconsistent advice about the coronavirus pandemic and insisted that Americans were “tired” of hearing about the outbreak.

“People are tired of COVID. Yup, there’s going to be spikes, there’s going to be no spikes, there’s going to be vaccines. With or without vaccines, people are tired of COVID,” Trump said on the call. “I have the biggest rallies I have ever had and we have COVID. People are saying whatever, just leave us alone. They’re tired of it.”

Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as perhaps his biggest vulnerability for his reelection efforts, and Biden has frequently sought to contrast his rhetoric on the public health crisis with that of the president, who has largely talked about the ongoing pandemic as if it has already passed.

Trump himself was diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, earlier this month and was subsequently hospitalized for three days.