But the escalating warfare between President Trump and Anthony Fauci may well have a more immediate impact on the pandemic that is increasingly devastating our country.

To be sure, the charge that the White House has done an “oppo dump” on Fauci is rather overblown.

Behind the scenes, the president hasn’t spoken to Fauci in more than a month.

Make no mistake, the president is the decision-maker and Fauci is a medical expert who, by his own account, is not in charge of setting policy.

But there is an important clash here: Fauci casts himself as a truth-teller, and Trump wants to control the administration’s message, which is that the pandemic is under control and things will be getting better.

What the White House has done, among other things, is basically kept Fauci off television.

The Washington Post reports that White House communications aides did approve appearances by Fauci on the PBS “NewsHour,” “Meet the Press” and a CNN town hall.

Fauci has been wrong on things,” says a statement sent by the White House to reporters.

The New York Times, in picking up the story yesterday, said the White House left out Fauci’s words, in an NBC interview, immediately after his “no need to change anything” comment:.

Asked yesterday by CNN’s Jim Acosta why the White House was “trashing” Fauci, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the statement came in response to the Post’s questions and the two men “have always had a very good working relationship.”.

A Times poll last month found that 67 percent of Americans trusted Fauci on Covid-19, while 26 percent trusted Trump.

If Fauci was a political appointee, he’d probably have gone the way of Jeff Sessions, Jim Mattis and John Bolton by now!

So the White House is clearly sidelining him instead.