Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist: ‘We Hope and Pray’ Trump Doesn’t Fire Dr. Fauci

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Remnick has compared President Donald Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus to former President Ronald Reagan’s reaction to the AIDS crisis. Remnick spoke to MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday.

Host Joe Scarborough spoke to Remnick about Trump’s unwillingness to accept the facts about the global pandemic when he was warned by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

“This is where we were from day one,” Remnick said. “This is where we were from day one. Look, even in the best of circumstances, people have a hard time understanding reality.”

“Remember Ronald Reagan on AIDS. It took a long, long time for that administration to act with compassion or any sense of realism. It was a denial of this thing because they thought it was a gay cancer, a marginal thing as the phrase was – a gay cancer at that time.

“We have that in our past, that ugliness, and many lives were lost because of the slowness to act on science, on fact,” he said.

“Look at what’s in our future. And in our present, in terms of climate change denialism.”

“Look at the price we’re already paying for the denialism of climate change. Again, these are scary issues, but these are the issues that adult politicians, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, must take on. It’s not as if these warnings came in January.”

“Fauci and other scientists have been talking about the potential for pandemic to do this kind of damage for years. For years. They’ve been shoved to the back burner. The attention given was much greater in the Obama administration and the Bush administration. In this administration, their budgets were cut. They were ignored. They were silenced. They were shunned to the side until it was too late.”

“And now, we’re in a situation where we hope and pray that one fine day, the President of the United States doesn’t wake up and fire Tony Fauci,” Remnick went on.

“We all know it’s possible. We all know it’s possible pause it is perfectly consistent with this kind of behavior, this kind of emptiness of mind and soul.”