Just when I thought Trump was trying to grow up, I find this bullshit.

New York Times

As Fauci becomes more vocal, Trump aides are moving to undercut him.

President Trump’s advisers undercut the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, over the weekend, anonymously providing details to various news outlets about statements he had made early in the outbreak that they said were inaccurate.

The move to treat Dr. Fauci as if he were a warring political rival comes as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in cases. He has also noted his lack of access to Mr. Trump.

Aides to Mr. Trump released to The Washington Post and other news outlets a list of remarks Dr. Fauci made about the virus when it was in its early stages. It featured several comments White House aides had privately complained about for months.

“There is no opposition research being dumped to reporters,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Monday. “We provided a direct response to a direct question and that’s about it.”

She added that the pair “always had a very good working relationship.”

An official told The Post that several other officials were concerned about how often Dr. Fauci had been wrong.

For example, White House officials pointed to a statement he made in a Feb. 29 interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”

But they omitted a warning Dr. Fauci delivered right after.

“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”

Dr. Fauci works for the Trump administration, but the list of his statements was laid out in the style of a campaign’s opposition research document.

A poll conducted for The New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67 percent of Americans trusted Dr. Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26 percent trusted the president.

In an interview with FiveThirtyEight.com last week, Dr. Fauci said that a few states had the virus under control but that “as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.”

Last week, Mr. Trump told Fox News that Dr. Fauci had been wrong about many aspects of the pandemic. Dr. Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” the president said.

TAKING ON FAUCI

Read more about the effort by President Trump’s aides to treat the nation’s top infectious disease expert as a political rival.