Supporters of President Donald Trump are attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The newspaper explained that Fauci “has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.”

“That fanciful claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Mr. Trump’s supporters, even as Dr. Fauci has won a public following for his willingness to contradict the president and correct falsehoods and overly rosy pronouncements about containing the virus,” The Times reported.

Trump supporters have been using the hashtag #FauciFraud.

“An analysis by The New York Times found over 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud, with some tweeting as frequently as 795 times a day,” the newspaper explained. “The anti-Fauci sentiment is being reinforced by posts from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group; Bill Mitchell, host of the far-right online talk show ‘YourVoice America’; and other outspoken Trump supporters such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who has falsely claimed to be the inventor of email.”

The attacks are spreading across the internet.

“Many of the anti-Fauci posts, some of which pointed to a seven-year-old email that Dr. Fauci had sent praising Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State, have been retweeted thousands of times,” the newspaper reported. “On YouTube, conspiracy-theory videos about Dr. Fauci have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the past week. In private Facebook groups, posts disparaging him have also been shared hundreds of times and liked by thousands of people, according to the Times analysis.”

The campaign against Dr. Fauci stands out because he is one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts and a member of President Trump’s virus task force https://t.co/TvrYrA0iD4 pic.twitter.com/y63yzfAAhk

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 28, 2020

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