President Donald Trump is refusing to let National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who also serves on the White House COVID-19 task force, testify before a House subcommittee hearing scheduled for next week.
White House spokesperson Judd Deere confirmed in an emailed statement to TPM on Saturday that Fauci would not be allowed to appear in front of the the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies on Wednesday.
“While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counterproductive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” Deere said. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”
The White House’s decision was first reported by the Washington Post.
An unnamed administration official told the Post that Fauci is slated to testify in front of the Senate to discuss testing amid the COVID-19 outbreak sometime during the week after he was supposed to appear at the House subcommittee hearing.
The doctor has often had to clean up Trump’s overly optimistic framing of the outbreak as the President pushes for an end to social distancing to allow the economy to reopen.
The resulting contradiction between Fauci and Trump’s messaging has reportedly angered the President, who retweeted a post in mid-April calling for the doctor’s ouster. However, the White House denied that Trump was planning to fire Fauci.
Dems need to demand that Fauci testify. Make the WH press corps grill this group. We know the WH ordered 100k additional body bags. What have they been deliberating that we ought to know? This is an example of why obstruction of justice is bad. It harms the public.
An explanation of what authority they have to do this would be, ya know, nice.
We start the day at a staggering 1,134,000 corona virus cases and 65,886 fatalities. If we average 1176 fatalities per day for the rest of this month, we will reach 100,000 fatalities by the end of May. We are also on track, if we average 20,000 new cases per day) to add another half a million and get to around 1.7 million total corona virus cases.
100,000 might be the point of no return for many independents and senior voters and even for some Republicans. It might even be the point of no return for this Administration. The numbers matter to them from a political framing/marketing standpoint. Saying it was ‘only 60,000’ was something they found sustainable looking down the road to the fall. 100,000 by early summer is a much harder number to defend, especially since they foolishly set the framing that the fall will see a new wave of infections.
I assume a subpoena will now be in order?
The divine right of kings asserts that Trump is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God.
Trump’s evangelical supporters will turn to their book and cite chapter and verse that “Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What are you doing?”
And the fabled founding fathers encapsulated that same philosophy in Article XII.