Dr. Anthony Fauci is testifying before the Senate on Tuesday, and from how he teased his appearance to a reporter Monday night, it’s anyone’s bet as to whether it’s more likely the White House will suddenly block him from appearing or he’ll appear and then Donald Trump will fire him in a fit of temper. Fauci has gotten away with a lot of truth-telling by Trump administration standards, but in an email to a reporter Monday night, he said he would warn of “needless suffering and death” if businesses reopen too quickly. That sort of thing doesn’t go over well with Trump.
The White House already blocked Fauci from testifying to the House, which is controlled by Democrats, while allowing him to go ahead with remote testimony to the Republican-controlled Senate. It’s an interesting question why Fauci let the world know, ahead of his Senate appearance, that he would not be pulling punches. But that he would not be pulling punches was clear in his email to New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
“The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate HLP committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely,” he wrote. “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
The Trump administration’s current plan is all about skipping over the checkpoints in the guidelines, reopening quickly, and treating tens of thousands of deaths as literally the cost of doing business. So Fauci is way off message here. Is he daring the White House to muzzle him? Did he anticipate that his appearance would be canceled and try to get his message out before doing so would be overt disobedience? Whatever his calculation, and however he will try to balance it with praise for the White House task force, Fauci clearly decided that this message was too important not to get into the headlines ahead of his Senate testimony.