Trump Sticks by His Losing Message: Fauci and the Scientists Are “Idiots”

Two weeks before the election, the anti-science president refuses to ditch the themes that have imperiled his campaign.

Ringo Chiu/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As the country enters the third and possibly largest coronavirus surge, Donald Trump is clinging to a message that’s been viewed as a critical factor behind his increasingly imperiled reelection chances.

Fauci is a disaster,” Trump said on Monday, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases, during a reported phone call with his campaign team. “If I listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths.” He then proceeded, according to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, to defiantly instruct any reporters who may be listening on the call to “have it just the way I said it,” adding that he “couldn’t care less” if his newest attacks on Fauci were made public. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said at another point.

The resoundingly anti-science, anti-reality remarks—public health experts, including Fauci, agree that the death toll in the United States could have been reduced with more robust, earlier action—come a day after the president, in a strange effort to mock Joe Biden, warned that if elected, Biden would adhere to the advice of the scientific community. “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump warned at a Nevada rally on Sunday, apparently referring to comments Biden made in an August interview with ABC News. “If I listened to the scientists, we’d have a country in a massive depression.”

The bizarre warning, coupled with his refusal to ditch some of the worst themes of his pandemic response, is likely to have the unintended effect of boosting his Democratic challenger. It’s also all but certain to fuel ongoing attacks against Fauci. Hours after the rally on Sunday, 60 Minutes featured a new interview during which Fauci detailed death threats he’d received. 

Shortly after the staff call, Trump on Monday continued to blast Fauci—insulting both his coronavirus expertise and baseball prowess—on Twitter:

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate