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VERIFY: How a Trump campaign ad misrepresents a quote by Anthony Fauci

A new ad from the Trump campaign shows a quote from Dr. Anthony Fauci that the doctor says was taken out of context.

A new political ad put out by President Donald Trump’s campaign this week, featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci, gives a positive overview of the president’s actions during the coronavirus pandemic. 

About 15 seconds into the ad, it says, “President Trump tackled the virus head-on as leaders should.” It then shows a clip of Fauci saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.”

Since this ad was published, Fauci has said he was misrepresented and called for the ad to be removed.

THE QUESTION

Was Fauci talking about President Trump’s response to COVID-19 when he said, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more?”

THE ANSWER

No. The original video shows that Fauci was talking about the Coronavirus Task Force and the amount of time they’d been committing to working on tackling the virus. He does not directly mention or reference Trump in the original segment. 

WHAT WE FOUND

In a Fox News interview in March, Fauci was asked about the work of the Coronavirus Task Force. 

The direct quote from Fauci is:

“I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. I’m connected by phone throughout the day and into the night. When I say night, I’m talking 12, one, two, in the morning. I’m not the only one. There’s a whole group of us that are doing that. It’s every single day. So I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anyone could be doing more.”

Fauci talked specifically about the task force members in this quote, but in the political ad, the original quote was cut down and placed after the line “President Trump tackled the virus head-on as leaders should.”

From the original clip and its context, we can verify the claim that Fauci said this statement about President Trump is false.

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