WASHINGTON – Anthony Fauci, the health care policy expert under fire from allies of President Donald Trump, said Monday he used a “poor choice of words” when he suggested lives could have been saved had the Trump administration put in place coronavirus restrictions earlier in the year.

In an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci was asked if lives could have been saved had measures been imposed during the third week of February instead of mid-March. Fauci said, “It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.”

Fauci said, “What goes into those kinds of decisions is – is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”

Taking the podium at the White House briefing Monday, Fauci said: “Hypothetical questions can sometimes get you into some difficulty.”

Trump called Fauci to the podium early in the briefing, an unusual move amid reports that the president was thinking of firing his adviser.

Fauci denied that Trump forced him to make the statement, telling reporters that “everything I do is voluntary … Please.”

Trump himself, under fire for what critics called a slow response to the spread of coronavirus, followed up Fauci’s mea culpa with a lengthy statement defending his actions as the virus spread across the country. His speech included a White House-produced, campaign-style video that showed governors and other officials praising Trump for restrictions that slowed the economy in order to contain the coronavirus.

“We could give you hundreds of clips like that,” Trump said as he criticized news coverage of the virus response.

On Sunday, Trump had generated new questions about the fate of his anti-coronavirus policy team by retweeting a post that called for firing Fauci.

Trump did not explicitly endorse the call to remove Fauci in his tweet Sunday, but in recirculating it, he defended himself against claims he did not act quickly enough to curb the spread of the virus that has killed almost 23,000 Americans and led to a near-shutdown of the American economy.

DeAnna Lorraine, a pro-Trump congressional candidate who polled less than 2% in an open primary challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claimed in a tweet, “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.”

She added, “Time to #FireFauci…”

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley derided the speculation over Trump’s retweet  as “media chatter” and said it was “ridiculous.” He said, “President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci” but defending himself against what he considers unfair attacks on his coronavirus response.

“Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump,” Gidley said.

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In retweeting the criticism of those comments, Trump did not cite Fauci at all. He focused on his decision to shut down flights in early February from China, where the coronavirus originated.

“Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up,” the president wrote.

Gidley said Trump’s retweet “clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history. It was Democrats and the media who ignored coronavirus, choosing to focus on impeachment instead.”

Trump and Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have disputed each other’s statements during the course of the epidemic.

Their disagreements included the amount of time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine and the usefulness of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that Trump championed as a treatment of coronavirus but that Fauci questioned.

During a White House briefing, Trump prevented Fauci from answering a reporter’s question on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.

“He’s answered that question 15 times,” Trump said.

Critics of the president said Fauci has been indispensable and expressed concern for his future with the administration. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe likened Fauci to former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in elections.

“Are you old enough to remember when even GOP Senators said that firing Mueller would end Trump’s presidency?” Tribe tweeted. “Well, firing Fauci would be way deadlier. Only this time we can’t even threaten mass street protests!”

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