Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci press conference (Screen Capture)
After Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on MSNBC, right-wing ex-congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine took to Twitter to claim that he was blaming President Donald Trump for not listening to health experts early enough. She then punctuated her tweet with the hashtag #FireFauci.
Trump agreed with it, saying, "Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN"
In fact, what Fauci said is that based on the information they had, Trump's China ban was too little too late. By the time the shutdown happened, the U.S. already had the virus, and it was spreading. After the first of the year, 430,000 people came into the United States from China, including 40,000 after the China ban. Trump didn't ban Europe until nearly a month later.
It was clear, more than China should have been shut down at the end of January. But even that may not have been enough. Fauci said in the interview that the U.S. was past the point of trying to stop it from reaching U.S. borders and should have switched immediately to mitigation.
What Fauci also said, and many have observed, is that after it became clear the virus was being spread person to person, no significant action was taken in the month of February. Fox News was reporting it was all hype through the first week of March. The president similarly was saying it was nothing more than the flu well through the end of February. It wasn't until March that states began shutting down.
Fauci also said he was begging for actions in middle to late January.
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