Assistant to the President Peter Navarro’s unflinching op-ed in Wednesday’s USA Today did not go through the “normal White House clearance processes,” said White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah. The opinion piece kicks off with Navarro writing, “Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on” and ends with a warning of “skepticism and caution” about anything Fauci says. Navarro thoroughly criticizes the nation’s top epidemiologist for the way he has advised the White House about the coronavirus pandemic, even though a recent poll gave Fauci a 76 percent approval rating over Trump’s 26 percent in terms of trustworthiness. Farah tweeted Wednesday that the article is “the opinion of Peter alone” and that the president “values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his administration.”
