"Sorry fake news, it's all on tape."
US President Donald Trump has retweeted a user calling for the dismissal of his administration's top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci.
Fauci is leading the US response to the Covid-19 outbreak but his advice has been at odds to what Trump has proclaimed on a number of occasions.
The latest clash seems to be as a result of Fauci's concession to CNN that earlier mitigation efforts could have saved more lives in the US. Fauci also again urged caution about reopening the country.
This comes despite Trump's repeated calls to quickly restart the US economy.
"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci said when asked by
CNN if lives would have been saved if social distancing and stay at home measures had been introduced in February instead of March.
"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated.
"But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."
Former Republican congressional candidate DeAnne Lorraine tweeted on Sunday that "Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives" along with the line "time to #fireFauci".
Trump retweeted Lorraine's tweet with the comment, "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you." as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 22,000 people in the United States.
He did not make direct reference to the "#FireFauci" line in the tweet.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1249470237726081030?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1249470237726081030&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F04%2F12%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-fauci-coronavirus.html
Trump has been criticised by some for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak with his detractors saying he downplayed the seriousness of the situation by initially comparing it to the common flu and others saying he tried to turn it into a political issue to beat the Democratic Party with.
