@RamblinRed Can you summarize Fauci’s take on the Presidents? I’m interested but for some reason that podcast will not load. Maybe the Deep State took it out or Trump 86’d it?
Below is what was in the CNN article that accompanied the podcast. So you can get some of the direct quotes there. From listening to it I would say that he had his highest praise for the 2 Bush's. He also had strong words of praise for Obama. He mentioned that Clinton was smart and had his head in the right place but was more formal. He largely tried to avoid saying anything about Trump positive or negative, partially because I think he doesn't want to say much while we are in the middle of a crisis. He did mention that one thing to remember is this will end, it will get better - but right now we are right in the middle. He also expects there to be multiple waves. And the more we social distance the better outcomes we will have.
The veteran doctor spoke in glowing terms about his relationships with earlier presidents. He highlighted his close relationship with President George H.W. Bush, noting that "just by accident I developed a really close friendship with him because he came to the (National Institute of Health) in the late 80s when he was vice president and was thinking of running for president, and he sincerely wanted to learn about HIV."
"He was a very modest, unbelievable human being. And he came in, he says, 'I want to learn,'" Fauci said, adding that he introduced Bush to patients at NIH and "gave him a bit of a tutorial on HIV."
"And all of a sudden he decided he was going to be my friend, thank goodness, and he invited me to the White House ... we had a very warm, personal type relationship," Fauci added.
His relationship with President Bill Clinton "was different," Fauci said.
"Clinton had all the right vibes about what to do. I had a good relationship with him, but it was quite formal, as you would have with respect to the presidency," he said.
Fauci said that he got to know President George W. Bush amid the crises of 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks before he "had the privilege of being close to him and developing PEPFAR," or the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Fauci considers Bush's PEPFAR -- an unprecedented, $3 billion-a-year program to help the world fight AIDS -- "one of the most important things any American president has ever done," he said, noting that "it saved millions of lives."
President Barack Obama was "a very easy person to get along with and a really good, good human being," Fauci said, highlighting the "marathon" of outbreaks at the time, including Ebola and Zika.
"He didn't joke about it because he was serious, but I remember once he walked into the into the Situation Room and we were sitting around and he just put his hand on his head," Fauci said.
"He said, 'I got children at the border, I got wars going on, and I'm spending all my time with these diseases. Would you guys please do something about this?' It was it was sort of like almost tongue in cheek, but it was serious," Fauci recalled.
One other note. Dr. Gupta asked him about a speech he gave at Georgetown early in 2017 where he said the US would likely have to face a pandemic soon and how he came to that conclusion. Fauci responded that every American President starting with Reagan has had to face an unexpected health crisis (or multiple) during their Presidency so it seemed natural to think it would happen again and a pandemic was a likely health crisis. He mentioned AIDs/HIV with Reagan and Bush, can't remember what it was with Clinton, anthrax with Bush, Swine Flu with Obama. There were a couple of others he mentioned that I can't remember off the top of my head.
