“There were times I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we’re having a really serious problem, you know, and the president was saying it’s something that’s going to disappear, which obviously is not the case. So, there was and is some disagreements in what we say and what comes out in the White House,” Fauci said.

“When you downplay something that is really a threat, that is not a good thing,” he continued…

Trump has continued to push for seemingly unrealistic timelines for returning to normalcy. In interviews Friday, Fauci disagreed with the president’s claim the U.S. is “rounding the corner.”

“If you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to COVID, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” Fauci said.