Fauci becomes the bad guy….

The key ‘expert’ won’t bend…

He has therefore become the enemy….

Tensions between the White House and Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, are spilling into the open as officials openly attack the doctor for his public health advice during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Fauci’s advice has often run contrary to President Trump’s views, and the attacks on Fauci have begun to look like a traditional negative political campaign against an opponent. Yet this time, the opponent is a public health expert and career civil servant working within the administration. 

Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff for communications, shared a cartoonon his Facebook page late Sunday that depicted Fauci as a faucet flushing the U.S. economy down the drain with overzealous health guidance to slow the spread of the pandemic.

The cartoon, which shows Fauci declaring schools should remain closed and calling for “indefinite lockdowns,” did not accurately portray what Fauci has advised in public.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s testing czar, downplayed any riff within the White House coronavirus task force before offering some criticism of Fauci.

“I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100 percent right and he also doesn’t necessarily, and he admits that, have the whole national interest in mind,” Giroir told “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”

There have been tensions between Trump and Fauci throughout the pandemic. The president has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the virus, broken with the advice of his own public health experts and painted rosy but at times misleading pictures of the U.S. response. Fauci, who has served four decades in his current post, has offered blunt talk on the dangers of the pandemic that has directly contradicted the president from time to time.

But the latest criticisms mark a shift as the White House has begun publicly undermining one of the leading public health voices in the administration at a time when multiple states are struggling to get new outbreaks under control….

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Top White House aide Dan Scavino publicly mocked Anthony Fauci late Sunday, sharing a cartoon of the top U.S. infectious disease expert depicted as a faucet on social media.

Scavino, White House social media director and deputy chief of staff for communications, posted the cartoon with phrases like “schools stay closed this fall,” “indefinite lockdown,” and “no NFL season” spewing from the faucet.

In a message accompanying the cartoon, Scavino promised to “publicly” disagree with Fauci while suggesting the top public health official had voiced disagreement “cowardly” through leaks to the media.

“Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly – and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks,” Scavino wrote. “See you tomorrow!”…

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Anybody believe this?

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday insisted that Anthony Fauci’s recommendations on the coronavirus pandemic are reaching President Trump amid signs of a rift between the commander in chief and the nation’s top infectious diseases expert.

McEnany also described Fauci’s opinion as only “one viewpoint” among many considered by Trump. Her remarks came after Fauci said last week that he hasn’t briefed the president in two months and were punctuated by growing evidence of an effort by the White House to cast doubt on Fauci’s credibility and sideline his opinion….

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image…CNN.Com