By Beyza Binnur Donmez
ANKARA (AA) – Former US President Donald Trump slammed his two former top advisers on coronavirus, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, accusing them of reinventing history.
Trump's remarks came Monday after CNN aired a preview of Fauci and Birx's remarks among other health experts. The full version of the interview is set to be aired Friday.
"Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned," Trump said in a statement.
"They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine – putting millions of lives at risk," he continued.
Calling Fauci "king of flip-flops," Trump said he "tried to take credit for the vaccine, when in fact he said it would take three to five years, and probably longer, to have it approved." He added with his efforts it gets it done.
Returning to Birx, he said: "Dr. Birx is a proven liar with very little credibility left."
He claimed that even Fauci "would always talk negatively about her."
"The States who followed her lead, like California, had worse outcomes on Covid, and ruined the lives of countless children because they couldn’t go to school, ruined many businesses, and an untold number of Americans who were killed by the lockdowns themselves," the former president said.
"Dr. Birx was a terrible medical advisor, which is why I seldom followed her advice."
In the preview of the CNN interview, Birx said that the first 100,000 deaths were difficult to prevent but the rest of the fatalities "could have been mitigated or decreased substantially."
The US has recorded more than 550,000 virus-related deaths, according to a running tally of Johns Hopkins University.
Fauci has long been a top target of Trump dating back to when he was in office as the top infectious disease expert and often opposed Trump's remarks on the pandemic.
