Fauci’s tour of post-Trump interviews continues: He says Trump pressured him to be ‘more positive’ on pandemic

Anthony Fauci told The New York Times that former President Trump pressured him to offer more sunny projections about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic.

“There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going, and the president would call me up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive,’ ” Fauci told the newspaper in an interview published Sunday.

Asked whether Trump offered reasons for wanting more optimistic public statements, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the then-president “didn’t get into the whys or anything.”

“[H]e didn’t do that kind of specificity. He just expressed disappointment,” Fauci said.