Trump denounces Fauci’s handling of Covid pandemic and demands reparations from China

Trump denounces Fauci’s handling of Covid pandemic and demands reparations from China

Former president Donald Trump on Saturday sharply attacked US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, demanded reparations from China and denounced an investigation into his finances in a speech in North Carolina. Speaking in Greenville, North Carolina, at the state's Republican Party convention, Mr Trump joined a chorus of Republican politicians who are criticising Dr Fauci for asking Americans to wear masks to guard against the virus and who at times has been sceptical of a theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan , China. Mr Trump called Dr Fauci "not a great doctor but a great promoter" for his frequent television appearances. "But he's been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also," Mr Trump said. The origin of the virus remains hotly contested and remains under study by US intelligence agencies. Mr Trump's own handling of the pandemic, in which nearly 600,000 people in the US have died and he himself was infected, was a factor in his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2020 election. Mr Trump called on China to pay $10 trillion in reparations to the