Dr. Anthony Fauci has vowed to quit his job as White House chief medical adviser if President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.
Fauci made the pledge during an interview on CNN when host Jim Acosta asked him if he would leave should Trump return to the White House.
Implying that the Trump administration mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci took the opportunity to get in some jabs while on national television.
“If Trump were to return to the White House as president, and COVID is still a threat or there is some other public health emergency, would you have confidence in his ability — would you have confidence in his ability to deal with a pandemic of this nature?” Acosta asked President Joe Biden’s top health adviser.
“Would you want to stay on in your post?”
“Well, no to the second question,” Fauci replied with a laugh.
“The first question, if you look at the history of what the [COVID-19] response was during the [Trump] administration, I think at best you could say it wasn’t optimal.”
“And I think just history will speak for itself about that,” he added.
Acosta then asked Fauci to clarify if he meant that he would not return to his post in a second Trump administration.
“Right,” Fauci confirmed. “For sure, yeah.”
WATCH:
CNN’s @acosta asks Dr. Anthony Fauci if he would return to the White House if Donald Trump was elected for a second term. Hear his response. pic.twitter.com/RM26OPZgYO
— CNN (@CNN) May 15, 2022
Trump has not committed to running for president in 2024 but has very publicly flirted with the possibility of running once more to seek the Republican Party’s nomination for president.
In February at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump suggested that the Democratic Party will soon experience a series of high-profile losses at the national level.
He said, “They’re going to find out the hard way starting November 8 and even more so starting November 2024.”
In 2021, after Joe Biden entered the White House, Fauci gushed that it was “liberating” to work under the new president.
Fauci said, “I can tell you I take no pleasure at all 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.”
“The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence and science is, and let the science speak – it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”
