Trump calls Fauci ‘a disaster’ and tries to encourage his campaign team

President Donald Trump continued to downplay the coronavirus pandemic and attacked the nation’s top infectious-disease expert as a “disaster” in a call with his campaign staff Monday that was designed to instill confidence in his reelection bid with two weeks to go until Election Day.

A day after Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, criticized Trump’s behavior during an interview Sunday night with CBS' “60 Minutes,” the president claimed that the country did not want to hear more from the country’s scientific leaders about the pandemic.

“People are tired of listening to Fauci and these idiots,” Trump said, falsely suggesting that Fauci’s advice on how best to respond to the outbreak was so bad it would have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more people.

“And yet we keep him,” Trump continued. “Every day he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci is a disaster.”

He added: “He’s been there for 500 years.”

Trump also argued that the American people were no longer interested in taking precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, even as the number of confirmed cases has been rising in a majority of states.

“People are tired of covid. I have the biggest rallies I’ve ever had. And we have covid. People are saying, ‘whatever, just leave us alone,’” Trump said, adding that he gets large crowds because people are tired of public health restrictions. The virus has killed more than 219,000 Americans.

The call, which some reporters were invited to listen in on, appeared to have been motivated by recent news stories about internal concerns about the president’s reelection chances and division within the president’s team. It was a staff-wide ‘attaboy’ call, where top aides and the president presented a rosy case for his reelection and tried to boost what several aides said was flagging morale.

He repeatedly told his campaign staff on the call that he had never felt more confident as a politician that he would win election - even though he said was concerned two or three weeks ago during his hospital stay after contracting the conoravirus. He repeatedly attacked the news media but also said he hoped the media was listening to the call.

» READ MORE: Fauci ‘absolutely not’ surprised by Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis

He praised his senior team, naming aides one by one - campaign manager Bill Stepien, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, campaign strategist Jason Miller - and attacked news stories that mentioned them in specific detail.

“I love my team. I am happy with my team,” Trump said, after denying friction between his top lieutenants.

Trump ticked through individual states and bragged about the crowds he gets and the unspecified poll results he has seen, which he claimed were different than the voter “suppression polls” reported publicly.

“I go to a rally I have 25,000 people,” Trump said, in a comparison with Democrat Joe Biden. “He goes to a rally, he has four people.”

Trump, phoning in from Las Vegas, sounded angry and defiant on the call and made a range of startling accusations and comments, including that his Democratic competitor, former vice president Joe Biden, should be “in jail.”

“He’s a criminal,” Trump said, without offering evidence what crime he had committed.

Trump also made repeated references to alleged communications from Biden’s son, Hunter, with foreign officials that have been reported in The New York Post in recent days. The newspaper said the information was provided to the by Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, who has not shared a hard drive from a computer allegedly owned by Hunter Biden that the former New York mayor claims to possess. The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify the information in the stories.

“I think Joe Biden has a scandal coming up that will make him almost an impotent candidate,” he said. “This scandal is so big. And the only thing he has going is he has a corrupt press who will not write about it.”

Much of the call was a venting session about the news media and pollsters. He signaled out both the New York Times and The Washington Post for particular derision and threatened to take legal action against one particular poll for having bad results.

Trump made a number of dubious or false statements, including saying he was back at campaign rallies one day after he was released from the hospital. It was one week later. He again said he could only lose the election if it was “rigged” and made false claims about voter fraud. He exaggerated his record in terms he usually uses on the campaign trail.

The president said the New York Times has not reached out to him in two years, but the outlet interviewed him in August and like almost ally news organizations regularly requests comment from the White House.

» READ MORE: Eight months in, California is containing COVID-19 as other states spike. Here’s why.

The president seemed to have the greatest opprobrium for Fauci, who was critical of Trump and the White House in the “60 Minutes” interview, saying that the president’s conduct made it unsurprising that he caught coronavirus, and the administration had tried to muzzle him. Fauci has a higher approval rating than the president, which has long rankled him, according to advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Campaign aides see the coronavirus - and the president’s handling of the pandemic - as their biggest political weakness, and Biden’s campaign has focused extensively on the issue. Trump’s message - that Fauci is an “idiot” and people are “tired” of the virus - is not the message advisers have suggested he deliver.

In closing, he offered some advice for his staff, saying they need to “work their asses off.”

“You have two weeks,” he said. “Don’t listen to anybody. Don’t even read the papers.”