White House Responds to Speculation Donald Trump Could Fire Anthony Fauci Amid 'Fire Fauci' Retweet

The White House has responded to speculation that President Donald Trump could fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, amid a recent "Fire Fauci" retweet. On Sunday former congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted, "Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large." She then added, "Time to #FireFauci..."

Trump retweeted the post, and commented, "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you (One America News.)" Now, NBC News reports that White House spokesman Hogan Gidley has responded to inquires as to whether or not Trump is considering firing Fauci. "This media chatter is ridiculous — President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci," Gidley said. "The president's tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history."

The backlash against Dr. Fauci came after he appeared on CNN's State of the Union and addressed how the government could have better handled the coronavirus outbreak early on. "Obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different," he said in the interview. "But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down." The outlet noted that, while Fauci's remarks could be seen as critical of Trump's response to the pandemic, Fauci does not technically report to Trump, rather he reports to Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health. Therefore the president would likely not fire him directly.

Last week, actor Dennis Quaid made waves on social media, after praising Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic. While speaking to The Daily Beast, about his new podcast, The Dennissance, Quaid was asked his opinion on the situation. He replied, "Well, to tell you the truth, I think the president is handling it in a good way." Quaid went on to say, "We see him on television every day, he's involved, and the travel ban early on was a great idea — which he did in spite of protest about that. But I don't want to get into the protest."

He added, "I'm an independent — I've voted both ways throughout my life, swinging like a pendulum toward what the country needed at the time — and I think this might be an opportunity for the country to come together again. World War II did that for that generation, and this might be our defining moment of a generation. It's going to be a different world, for sure, when all this is over, and hopefully we can all be a bit more unified."