Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday pushed back against President Donald Trump for calling his own health adviser a "disaster."
"Coronavirus infections are spiking across the country, but President Trump decided to attack Dr. Fauci again today as a 'disaster' and call public health experts 'idiots' instead of laying out a plan to beat this virus or heeding their advice about how we can save lives and get our economy moving again," Biden said, according to a statement reported by The Hill.
"Waving a white flag and saying 'it is what it is' is unacceptable when thousands of American lives are being taken each week, when businesses are closing and schools remain shuttered," Biden said. "The American people have never backed down from a challenge, but they need a leader to show the way and all President Trump has done is cower and wallow in self-pity."
Trump, in a Monday call to campaign staffers, said he was tired of hearing Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and "all these idiots." The call came a day after Fauci appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes," saying he worried Trump would catch COVID-19 after seeing no social distancing and few wearing masks at the White House announcement on Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination.
Trump and several people at the event later tested positive for COVID-19, and Trump spent three days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment.
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