‘I inherited him’: Trump disowns Fauci and moves closer to adviser with controversial herd immunity beliefs

President falsely claimed that nationally famous adviser obstructed him on travel bans

In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump said he generally doesn’t agree with his top coronavirus adviser Dr Anthony Fauci, and gave credence to the idea of relying on mass infection to create “herd immunity”.

Broadcast on Monday, the interview — which also saw the president claim Joe Biden is a puppet of “people you’ve never heard of” lurking in “the dark shadows” — included an exchange on efforts to end the coronavirus outbreak in the US, which focused in part on Mr Trump’s relationship with Dr Fauci.

“If you had to do it all again,” asked host Laura Ingraham, “I know it’s kind of a hard question — would you put Fauci front and centre, every day, in charge of the coronavirus task force?”

Mr Trump appeared unenthusiastic at the idea. “I get along with him very well, I disagree with a lot of what he says. He said ‘keep it open for China’, that was a big mistake and he admits it.”

Dr Fauci in fact is on record as recommending travel restrictions on China, as well as continental Europe and the UK, since the earliest days of the US outbreak.

“I just — I get along with him,” Mr Trump continued, “but just once in a while he’ll come up with one that I say ‘where did that come from’?

“I inherited him. He was here, he was a part of this huge piece of machinery. I didn’t put anyone in charge, he was here ... you inherit a lot of people as part of the machinery, and you have some you love, some you don’t.

“I like him. I don’t agree with him that often. But I like him.”

Since the pandemic began, Dr Fauci has routinely had the responsibility of issuing evidence-based and less optimistic prognoses about the virus’s spread that temper Mr Trump’s sometimes blithe opinions and positive false claims, which include the idea that the virus will at some point “disappear”.

In part because of these public correctives, Dr Fauci has long been less than popular among many of Mr Trump’s allies, many of whom have criticised him for supposedly over-egging the risk from the virus and differing with the president on important points — among them the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug long promoted as a potential Covid-19 cure by Ms Ingraham herself.

Ms Ingraham asked Mr Trump if the pace of vaccine development might worry some parents cautious of a hastily developed vaccine, especially those who object to the idea of the government making vaccinations mandatory.

In his answer, Mr Trump acknowledged anti-vaccination concerns while also nodding to the “herd immunity” approach that would involve allowing the virus to spread unchecked, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people, to a point where enough of the general population became immune to prevent future outbreaks.

“Once you get to a certain number,” said Mr Trump, “we use the word ‘herd’, right? Once you get to a certain number it’s going to go away, so you know it doesn’t have to be. But yeah, a lot of people are not going to want to do it, a lot of people don’t want to do the flu vaccine. You know I never had the flu, but I never had a shot!”

The idea of herd immunity has lately been promoted not just by conservative commentators including Ms Ingraham, but by figures within the Trump administration. Chief among them is Scott Atlas, newly recruited as a coronavirus adviser in August, who does not have a background in infectious disease control.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has staked substantial political capital on its accelerated vaccine development programme, Operation Warp Speed, which is aiming to produce a viable inoculation by the end of this year.

Some in the medical community are worried that the administration’s real priority may simply be to have a viable vaccine ready to announce before election day on 3 November — meaning a vaccine may be rushed into use before its efficacy and safety have been established.

Elsewhere, anti-vaccination sentiments have been growing louder as the pandemic wears on, and have become one of the most visible conspiracy theories among those who question whether the coronavirus is real or who believe it to be a man-made pathogen designed to control populations.

To complicate matters still further, among those who most defiantly reject mainstream expert opinion on the pandemic and the virus are many Trump supporters.