Joe Biden has been president for less than 36 hours but administration employees—the few who stayed on after Donald Trump got on a plane bound for Palm Beach—are already getting used to a new way of life. For the White House kitchen staff, that probably means not having to hide vegetables in the president‘s food just to get him to eat something of nutritional value. For the people working the West Wing switchboard, it probably means not having to constantly tell Don Jr. his father can’t talk and yes, they know he’s been trying every day for months. And for Dr. Anthony Fauci, it means not having to work for a colossal moron who lies about everything all the time and expects others to do the same, even and including instructing the public to consider free-basing bleach.
Speaking to the White House press corps on Thursday, an exuberant Fauci, who’d been sidelined by Trump for months, said it was downright freeing to work for someone who actually wants him to tell the nation the truth about the pandemic, and not just pretend it’s going to “miraculously” go away. “I can tell you I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president, so it was really something that you didn’t feel you could actually say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it,” he said. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence and science is, and know that’s it—let the science speak—it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”
Fauci became something of a national hero early on in the pandemic when it became clear that he was one of the few—only?—officials in the federal government not comfortable with standing up during the daily coronavirus briefing and lying through his teeth. Naturally, that put him in Trump’s crosshairs, particularly when the good doctor expressed skepticism about hydroxychloroquine, which Trump was hyping as a miracle cure, or suggesting people inject household cleaner into their veins. As a reminder, this was Fauci’s face for most of the time he was forced to stand next to the president while he offered such medical advice.
On Thursday, Fauci said “it was very clear that there were things that were said regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact,” adding that his willingness to contradict Trump was “why I got in trouble sometimes,” though he has no fears whatsoever about being sidelined for speaking his mind under Biden. “One of the things that was very clear as recently as about 15 minutes ago when I was with the president, is that one of the things we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open, and honest,” he said. “If things go wrong, not point fingers but to correct them, and to make everything we do be based on science and evidence. That was literally a conversation I had 15 minutes ago with the president, and he has said that multiple times.” At another point, asked if it would have been helpful if Amazon had gotten involved in the government’s COVID-19 response, Fauci replied: “No, I don’t think I could answer that question. One of the new things in this administration is if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess, just say you don’t know the answer.”
When a reporter claimed Fauci had “joked a couple times” about what an amazing difference it was to go from working for the 45th president to the 46th, the doctor made it clear that he was completely serious and that the last year had been hell on earth and that he. “You said I was joking about it. I was very serious. I wasn’t joking,” he said.
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