Trump targets Fauci: Ex-president 'will rip into embattled COVID tsar during rally speech tonight over multiple flip-flops on masks, Wuhan lab funding and cover-up speculation
Former President Donald Trump is set to return to the stage and take part in what for all intents and purposes will look like a campaign rally later on Saturday where he will make Dr. Anthony Fauci his latest punching bag.
Trump will be making his first public speech in months at North Carolina Republican Party's annual convention where he is set to recall his 2020 election loss and take aim at the nation's top infectious disease expert.
The plan to target the doctor, who has become entwined with the coronavirus pandemic could becoming something of a fixation for the ex-president. Trump is famed for continuing to obsess over 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for years after he defeated her.
Former President Donald Trump is returning to the rally circuit this weekend. He is set to air a set of grievances with a planned attack on Dr. Fauci together with a repeat of conspiracies about his 2020 election loss
Fauci has been a target for some Republicans dating back to last year, when he evolved his guidance on masking and distancing as more information about the pandemic emerged
'People see Anthony Fauci and they think of shuttered businesses, lost school,' Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told Axios.
Fauci has been a target for some Republicans dating back to last year, when he flip-flopped his guidance on masking and distancing as more information about the pandemic emerged.
Republicans including Trump tried to ridicule the doctor saying his overcautious approach ended up shutting down the economy.
Fauci and his family eventually needed private security as he and his family faced threats.
Trump, along with a host of prominent conservatives both within the GOP and within the media, have continued to criticize decisions made by Fauci.
They include his changing advice on masks, and apparently conflicting views over whether COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to which Fauci has ties.
'The correspondence between Dr. Fauci and China speaks too loudly for anyone to ignore. China should pay Ten Trillion Dollars to America, and the World, for the death and destruction they have caused!' Trump said in a statement earlier this week.
'People see Anthony Fauci and they think of shuttered businesses, lost school,' Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said
The idea the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan lab was at best a 'fringe theory' until recently, when the Biden administration ordered a review
Although most experts still believe the virus was transmitted from a bat to some other species of animal, then to humans, its origins remain unproven.
The Wuhan lab was famed for conducting tests on bat coronaviruses, with experts who support the leak theory saying the same city being ground zero for the outbreak is too great a coincidence to ignore.
Fauci is now facing accusations that accuse him of mishandling and downplaying the theory the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan suggesting he was not forthcoming about the evidence for the theory.
The Biden administration has ordered the intelligence community to produce a report on COVID-19's origins by the end of the summer with particular attention focused on the lab-leak theory with the possibility the virus infected workers studying it at a Wuhan lab, who then infected others.
Fauci told the Financial Times China should release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses could provide vital clues into whether COVID resulted from a lab leak.
Republicans including Trump tried to ridicule the doctor saying his overcautious approach ended up shutting down the economy. Fauci is pictured in March 2020
'I have always felt that the overwhelming likelihood — given the experience we have had with SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, bird flu, the swine flu pandemic of 2009 — was that the virus jumped species, but we need to keep on investigating until a possibility is proven,' Fauci said.
Meanwhile, allies of Donald Trump have begged him not to mention a conspiracy theory claiming he'll be reinstated as president by August over fears it'll damage his re-election chances.
Aides are advising him to keep quiet on an outlandish claim he is said to have made earlier this week mooting a return to the presidency in the next two months.
New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman first reported Tuesday that the former president 'has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.'
Former President Donald Trump is being advised not to say anything during a rally this weekend in North Carolina where he might suggest he could be back in the White House by August
Trump released a statement on his blog on Friday evening promoting his North Carolina rally
The comments from Times reporter Maggie Haberman came after Trump's original National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said a Myanmar-style coup 'should happen.'
Haberman also pointed out that Trump supporters have expressed support for the coup idea.
But one confidant told The Daily Beast they are praying that Trump does not bend to the will of his supporters when he takes the podium on Saturday.
'I conveyed something [to Trump] to the effect of, 'It would be a terrible idea to even say the word, "August" [at Saturday's event],' one source is said to have told the former president.
Former Trump adviser Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor, went on-the-record to urge his friend to avoid mentioning the word 'August' at his rally.
He said: 'I have and continue to be a strong supporter of President Trump’s.
'I would love to see him back in the White House in 2024, but I believe there is no benefit to relitigating the last election. We need to be concentrated on winning the next election.
The former president has been telling people he expects to be reinstated as president by August, according to The New York Times' Maggie Haberman
'People need to engage and deal with reality, not fantasy. I know the president to be an extremely intelligent person, one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and I would doubt seriously the reports that he believes he’s going to be reinstated in August.'
According to the Beast, several other sources have also got in touch with Trump to deliver a simple message: 'Whoever is trying to get in your ear to tell you that you could be "reinstated" in the White House by August, or at any time during President Joe Biden's term in office, doesn't know what they're talking about, and repeating their deranged theories in public could be used against you by your enemies. It would be better to focus on the 2022 midterm elections and, subsequently, the 2024 presidential race.'
The sources have also revealed that they have tried to make their case to Trump as gently as possible, fearing that if they push him too hard he will talk about it to spite them.
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman tweeted Tuesday morning that former President Donald Trump has been telling people he expects to be reinstated as president by August
The former president lost legal protections once he left office in January, with Haberman reporting that Trump is pushing the idea of reinstatement as he faces potential indictment over his business dealings
Haberman also reported that Trump has been 'laser focused' on audits happening in Arizona with another expected in Georgia, as the former president continues to push the 'big lie'
Trump has made sporadic statements since leaving the White House, the most recent of which saw him claim his theory that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had finally been vindicated.
But he has not said anything about the August reinstatement claim, worrying Trump supporters opposed to any such reinstatement.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally, said he likely inspired the former president.
'If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly,' Lindell told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
'The month of August, for this, is subjective…but I don't know if it'll be that month, specifically…I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That's how I landed on August, and I'm hopeful that that is correct.'
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally, said he likely inspired him. 'If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly.' The two are pictured together at the White House on March 30, 2020
Lindell was referring to evidence that President Joe Biden won the November 2020 election fraudulently. No such proof of any such fraud has ever been uncovered, despite multiple claims by Trump suggesting he'd been kicked out of office unfairly.
On Thursday, Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump said that people are getting 'worked up' over nothing and her father-in-law does not actually expect to be reinstated as president.
'As far as I know, there are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August. Maybe there's something I don't know,' Lara told the Fox & Friends panel Thursday morning.
'But no, I think that that is a lot of folks getting a little worked up about something just because maybe there wasn't enough pushback, you know, from the Republican side,' she added.
'So no, I have not heard any plans for Donald Trump to be installed in the White House in August.'
Lara, who is married to Trump's second-eldest son, Eric, appears to be the most high-profile member of the former president's orbit to weigh in on the report and deny its validity.
Donald Trump's daughter-in-law Lara pushed back against reports Thursday, insisting to 'Fox & Friends' that the former president does not expect to be reinstalled at the White House in August
Trump shut down his ‘desk’ blog this week where he posted statements as a way to get around his social media ban.
The webpage was shuttered just 29 days after it launched because Trump didn’t like that it had such low readership and was getting mocked, according to The Washington Post.
Much of the former president’s musing through those statements were focused on his claims of widespread voter fraud. He also would complain of Democrats in Washington and issue endorsements for Republicans loyal to him.
Haberman said Trump has been 'laser focused' on election audits - including the state Senate Republican-led one in Maricopa County, Arizona, as well as another audit expected in Georgia's Fulton County - as the Manhattan district attorney has convened a grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict the former president.
Trump's daughter-in-law, who shared two children with Eric, is largely rumored to be considering a Senate run in her home state of North Carolina for retiring Senator Richard Burr's seat.
During the Thursday interview, Lara mocked the outlet that first claimed Trump thinks he will be reinstated in late summer 2021.
'I think you should take a look at who those networks are and who is pushing that story out,' she said of the report that came from the Times and soon thereafter was pushed by some of Trump's biggest enemy outlets – CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post.
MAGA fans took to the water in Jupiter, Florida , for a boat parade earlier this week
The huge flotilla of boats with a sea of Trump flags takes part of the parade in Jupiter, Florida
Trump has continued to falsely push that he didn't lose the 2020 race to President Joe Biden.
Supporters have glommed on to that message, with a number of Trump fans sporting 'Trump won' flags at a large boat parade in Florida over Memorial Day weekend.
And some of his allies have given Trump's most vehement supporters false hope that he could be reinstated.
Over the weekend, lawyer Sidney Powell told an audience in Dallas that Trump could be back.
'It should be that he can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration day is set,' she said to cheers. 'And Biden is told to move out of the White House. And President Trump should be moved back in.'
Powell is known for spreading a number of conspiracy theories to Trump supporters about the 2020 race.
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