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“But, you know, people do have their opinions other than that. I’ve always thought of myself as a realist when it comes to this.”
Fauci’s comments follow a tense stretch with the President that saw the White House make a concerted effort to discredit him as he became increasingly vocal about his concerns over reopening the country amid a national surge in coronavirus cases.
Those bullet points, which resembled opposition research on a political opponent, included Fauci downplaying the virus early on and a quote from March when Fauci said, “People should not be walking around with masks,” among other comments.
Trump later said, however, that he has “a very good” relationship with Fauci.
Despite Trump’s characterization of their relationship, he did not invite Fauci to attend the White House news conference on the pandemic that was scheduled for Tuesday evening.
Fauci told Tapper that he was not asked to attend, even though, according to a source familiar with the matter, he was expected to be invited.
“I was not invited,” he said a little less than an hour before Trump’s briefing was set to begin. “Up to this point, I’m assuming I’m not going to be there.” Fauci added that he last spoke to Trump about the pandemic late last week and did not brief him before Tuesday’s public briefing.
After Trump largely adopted a strategy of ignoring the pandemic in the last few weeks — as his poll numbers have continued to drop — the President announced Monday that he would resume resume regular public briefings despite discontinuing them in April and declaring them a waste of time.
The President may or may not have health experts with him when he holds the briefings and he will definitely cover other topics, the official said. As a result, White House aides decided to call it a news conference rather than a coronavirus task force briefing in the schedule.
And while Trump has told aides he plans to take questions, the official said, it is unclear how many he will field, leaving open the possibility that he will use these sessions to air his grievances and attack his political opponents as he has at recently called “press conferences.”
Tuesday’s White House briefings also coincides with a push from the Trump administration to reopen schools this fall.
Fauci said he has not specifically talked to Trump or Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about reopening schools, but that it has come up at coronavirus task force meetings.
“In general, when I think about that, I want to take a 40,000-foot look and say, as a fundamental principle, I do agree that we should try as best as we possibly can to get the children back to school,” Fauci said. “Because of the well-documented, you know, secondary downstream ripple effects that are negative on parents and on the children when you keep them out of school,”
This story has been updated with additional information Tuesday.
CNN’s Jim Acosta, Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
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