Fauci recalls highs and lows of Trump Covid response

Anthony Fauci praised Operation Warp Speed, former President Donald Trump's campaign to quickly create a Covid-19 vaccine, as "a very positive thing" in an interview Sunday.

But what, host Jonathan Karl asked, about the idea that many Trump supporters continue to constitute a majority of the anti-vaccine movement anyway?

"It's weird," the retiring chief medical adviser to the president said on ABC's "This Week."

In an exit-style interview as he prepares to leave a 54-year career in government service, Fauci said the former president should get credit where it's due for his administration's vaccine campaign; however, he also reflected on what he viewed as the more difficult moments of advising Trump.

Fauci said he had "a bad feeling" about the April 2020 briefing in which Trump would eventually suggest injecting disinfectants to fight Covid, before the briefing even started.

The administration initially brought in a representative from the Department of Homeland Security — ABC showed photos of Bill Bryan, who was present at the briefing — to speak to the situation room, Fauci said.

"As soon as I heard it, I said, 'Holy shit, this is going to go bad. Why don't I bow out of this one?'" Fauci told Karl. Had he been present, he would have given a "time out" signal on the briefing, he added.

Fauci stuck it out through the rest of Trump's term and the start of Joe Biden's presidency but announced in August he plans to step down in December from his positions as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of NIH) and top pandemic medical adviser.

The country had the "triple misfortune" of facing a pandemic in a divided society, in an election year, Fauci said, leading the nation's response to get political "very quickly."

"It was a triple whammy," Fauci said.

As he departs his positions, the adviser on both the Covid-19 and AIDS crises, among others, said he wants to be "remembered as someone who gave everything they had," directly for the United States and indirectly for the world.

He said he gets chills when he thinks about leaving the National Institutes of Health campus for the last time in his 80s, having started there at age 27 in 1968.

"I didn't leave anything on the field," Fauci said.