After Dr. Fauci Admits Lives Would Have Been Saved If US Shut Down Earlier, And Says There Was "A Lot Of Pushback" Against The Idea, Trump Retweets A #FireFauci Post

Donald Trump is furious about a deeply-reported and damning story in Saturday's New York Times, which laid bare the myriad failures of Trump's administration to acknowledge the existence of the coronavirus and the threat it posed and to act quickly and decisively to stem its spread. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, acknowledged that lives could have been saved if Trump had acted sooner to shut the country down.

Trump reposted a Twitter message saying "Time to #FireFauci".

On March 23, the Times reported that Trump was losing his patience with Fauci because the doctor "has grown bolder in correcting the president's falsehoods and overly rosy statements about the spread of the coronavirus ... And now, Mr. Trump's patience has started to wear thin."

On Sunday, Fauci was on CNN's "State of the Union" and said:

[If] you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you're right. Obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down.

DR. FAUCI on CNN: "You could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously no one is going to deny that ... But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back [in February]." pic.twitter.com/KpUDCrkS64

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 12, 2020

Fauci is clearly referring to Trump when he mentions pushback against shutting things down. In fact, Trump is still pushing back, wanting to "open up the country" against the advice of scientists and medical experts.

Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020

DeAnna Lorraine, a former Republican congressional candidate who received less than 2% of the vote in an open primary against Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, 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. Time to #FireFauci..."

Trump posted the tweet with this reply: "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up."

The post was one of several posted by Trump, as he lashed out at any criticism of his handing of the government's response, blaming at least seven people or entities: China, the World Health Organization, President Barack Obama, the nation's governors, Congress, Democrats generally and the news media.

I cannot figure out how "China" or "Obama" or "the media" could have forced the US government to react faster to the spreading pandemic, or how they could have somehow stopped it on their own, but they apparently are at fault more than the top man in charge of the entire government.

Also, Trump did not "ban China". What he actually did, beginning on February 2, was to block foreign nationals who had been in China within the past 14 days from coming into the US. After this supposed closing of the borders, as Trump has also falsely described it, more than 40,000 travelers from China came into the US.