Fauci Reveals 'Painful' Disagreement With Donald Trump Over COVID Policy

Anthony Fauci has shed light on how disagreements with former President Donald Trump on coronavirus pandemic policy were "painful" for him and led to him being "the object of the anger" for the far right.

Speaking on MSNBC on Thursday, the former chief medical adviser to the president, who was regularly the face of the government's response to the pandemic, suggested that he feared for his life and said he now had a personal security detail as a result.

Reacting to a clip of Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis telling a crowd in 2022 that "someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac," the leading immunologist said that comments like that "triggered" people "who are bad and really want to hurt people."

While in his post at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci regularly appeared to disagree with Trump on their public messaging. In March 2020, after the former president suggested malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could prevent infection from the virus, Fauci refuted the claim to reporters, describing the evidence as "anecdotal."

A month later, after the former chief medical adviser—who stepped down from his public role last year—gave a gloomy assessment of the COVID outbreak in the U.S., the Trump White House questioned the accuracy of Fauci's predictions.

"I'm the one who had to—in an uncomfortable way; I wasn't pleased with that; I wasn't happy to do it—that I had to publicly disagree with the president of the United States," Fauci commented on Thursday. "That was very painful for me because I have a great deal of respect for the presidency of the United States.

"But I felt, in order to just maintain my own personal and professional integrity, and my responsibility to the American public, I had to say it like it was and I had to do it publicly."

The immunologist went on to say that his disagreements with the president "triggered a degree of negativity towards me on the part of the far right" and he quickly became a "symbol" and "the object of the anger."

It is not the first time that Fauci has spoken out about the rhetoric leveled against him. In March, while facing accusations that he had covered up the true origins of the pandemic—which some believe may have been caused by a lab leak in China—Fauci described the attacks as "politically motivated" on the part of Republican politicians.

At the time, a Trump spokesperson described him as "a liar and fraud."

More recently, Fauci caused outrage after appearing to admit that there was insufficient evidence to show that wearing facemasks prevented the spread of the virus at a population level, amid concerns that pandemic-era policies may be reinstituted over a rise in cases.

When asked to respond to DeSantis' remarks, the former chief medical adviser said he thought the Florida governor "doesn't want to hurt me personally," but added: "When they say something like that, you get somebody who doesn't know anything at all about me who's crazy [who] says: 'Wow, I'm going to get that person' or 'that person should be killed' or 'that person should be prosecuted.' And that's the reason why I have to have security."

Fauci has previously stated on several occasions since 2020 that he, his wife and children have been the subject of death threats and abuse. In May 2022, a West Virginia man pleaded guilty to emailing death threats to him and other top health officials, including that Fauci and his family would be "dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire."

Thomas Patrick Connally Jr., 56, was sentenced to over three years in prison that August.

Newsweek approached Fauci and the office of DeSantis via email for comment on Friday.