Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday found a Republican defender on Capitol Hill after President Donald Trump criticized him in a conversation with campaign staffers.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called Fauci "one of our country's most distinguished public servants."
"If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we'd have fewer cases of COVID-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat," according to a statement, The Hill reported.
Alexander is retiring at the end of the current session.
The Hill earlier Monday reported on audio it obtained from a Trump conversation with staffers.
"People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots — these people, these people that have gotten it wrong," Trump says. "Fauci is a nice guy, he's been here for 500 years, he called every one of them wrong."
Trump has long had disagreements with Fauci's more cautious approach to the coronavirus pandemic. But he might have been pushed over the edge by his coronavirus task force member's comments in a Sunday night "60 Minutes interview in which Fauci said he feared the president would catch COVID-19 after witnessing the event introducing Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. There was little social distancing or mask wearing.
"I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask," Fauci said.
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