Fauci unloads on Trump: 'He did things that were terrible' when I contradicted him

Dr. Anthony Fauci unloaded on former President Donald Trump in an interview with the UK newspaper The Telegraph.

Throughout the interview, Fauci recounted how his former boss would routinely take bad advice on how to handle the novel coronavirus pandemic and would act out whenever anyone with expertise contradicted him.

"When it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things -- or allowed things to happen -- that were terrible," Fauci told the paper. "Like he allowed Peter Navarro [Trump's trade adviser] to write an editorial in USA Today saying that almost everything I've ever said was wrong."

Fauci also blamed the president's regular criticism of him for the threats he and his family face to their safety.

"To this day I have to have armed federal agents guarding me all the time," Fauci said.

Fauci also told The Telegraph that Trump completely lost any remaining interest he had in containing the pandemic after he lost the 2020 election, thus leaving it up to public health experts to try to contain the damage.

"We were trying, but we were acting almost alone, in the sense of without any direction," he said. "When President Biden walked into the White House we were having 300,000 to 400,000 cases per day, 4,000 deaths per day, and our hospitals were on the brink of being overrun."

Read the whole interview here (subscription required).