Dr. Anthony Fauci Reveals Trump Administration ‘Blocked’ Him From Appearing on Rachel Maddow Show

On Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci made his debut on The Rachel Maddow Show after having spent “months” hoping to appear on the MSNBC show. Appearing on the show to discuss the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in the United States, Fauci, one of the nation’s leading experts in infectious diseases, revealed he had previously been “blocked” from making an appearance by former President Donald Trump‘s administration, though he vowed there will be “a lot of transparency” under Joe Biden’s presidency.

Asked by Maddow if the press and the public will have “more access” to him under the new administration, Fauci said he’s “positive of it.” The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Maddow he had “been wanting to come on your show for months and months” and Maddow herself had “been asking me to come on your show for months and months,” but “it’s just gotten blocked.” Fauci did not mention Trump, though he said, “I mean, let’s call it what it is. It just got blocked, because they didn’t like the way you handled things and they didn’t want me on here.”

Fauci said “it was so clear” when he sat down with members of the Trump administration that they did not want him to go on the show. He said they questioned, “‘Why would you want to go on Rachel Maddow’s show?’” to which he replied, “‘Well, because I like her and she’s really good.’” He was told, “‘It doesn’t make any difference. Don’t do it.’” Under the new administration, Fauci said he doesn’t anticipate encountering the same issues and he and other public health experts will be more accessible.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of transparency,” he said. “You might not see everybody as often as you want but you’re not going to see deliberate holding back of good people when the press asks for them. It was a tough situation, it really was.”

Fauci had been a member of Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force, though he and the president seemingly did not see eye-to-eye. Trump, at one point, had even threatened to fire Fauci. Following Biden’s inauguration, Fauci has been appointed chief medical adviser and a member of Biden’s COVID-19 response team. At a White House briefing last week, Fauci said he had a “liberating feeling” working with the Biden administration compared to the Trump administration, explaining that under the former president, “you didn’t feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it,” CBS News reported. He said under the new administration, “the idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is and know that’s it, let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”