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Trump plans to make Fauci ‘the new Hillary’ at his Summer rallies

‘People see Anthony Fauci and they think of shuttered businesses’, says former president’s senior adviser

Gino Spocchia
Friday 04 June 2021 17:16 BST
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Anthony Fauci says don't be 'accusatory' with China on coronavirus investigation
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Donald Trump is set to make Anthony Fauci the focus of his upcoming rallies, according to a report, following the release of his emails.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the former president, told Axios that "people see Anthony Fauci and they think of shuttered businesses” and “lost school[ing]”.

The report added that Dr Fauci will fill a void left by Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, whose emails were the focus of a “Lock her up” chant for MAGA fans.

It follows rising criticism of the Dr Fauci for an email thanking him for dismissing the theory of a lab leak from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology in early 2020.

Dr Fauci, who in recent weeks said he is open to investigating the origins of the Covid-19 virus, received the email from EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit that helped fund some research at the institute.

It was among thousands of emails that were released following a freedom of information request by The Washington Post and Buzzfeed.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr Trump wrote: "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!"

Mr Trump went on to say that Dr Fauci “was totally against masks” in the beginning of 2020, despite the former president refusing to be photographed for months in a mask.

Defending the emails in recent days, Dr Fauci told CNN that the theory of a deliberate lab leak from Wuhan’s virology institute was “a bit far out”, despite being open to an investigation.

“I don't remember what's in that redacted [email],” said Dr Fauci, “but the idea I think is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves as well as other people”.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director also said recently that he has not ruled out the Wuhan institute as the origin of the virus — as a renewed US investigation is underway, following an order from president Joe Biden.

Initial investigations from the World Health Organisation found that the virus was likely transferred from bats to humans, but that the findings were not “extensive enough”.

US intelligence officials say the virus either transferred from an animal to human, or was from the lab in Wuhan.

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