“First of all, you’re not allowed,” Trump said. “He’s civil service, and you’re not allowed to fire him. But forget that, because I don’t necessarily go by everything. But Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player in my administration.” …

“It’s important to point out for a long time that was not his excuse,” DeSantis told The Rubin Report on Wednesday. “His excuse had been that if you fired Fauci, both the Democrats and the media would have pitched a fit, which, of course, is 100% true.

“But that’s the price of leadership. You got to stand up and do what’s right. Clearly, he could have been fired from the White House Task Force. There was no obligation to run him out at press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews.”

[He could have been fired from NIAID, too, but the interim step was even easier, as DeSantis points out. NIAID directors are appointed by the National Institutes of Health, and both are directly under presidential executive authority. As appointees, they are fireable without civil-service protections. Even if Trump wanted to avoid the media backlash and chaos — which certainly would have erupted from firing Fauci — he could have relegated him to obscurity by ending his on-camera roles in official proceedings and elevated others to replace him. If Trump thinks he couldn’t have fired or even sidelined Fauci, how does he expect people to believe he’s the guy to drain the swamp … again? — Ed]