President Donald Trump on Friday denied reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has been “sidelined” from the U.S. coronavirus task force, calling the idea “fake news.”
Politico reported that Azar was “a notable omission” from Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Washington state on Thursday as part of the coronavirus response team, noting that Azar was “benched” from a briefing by the task force on Wednesday, which Politico said was “the latest sign of diminished standing for an official who was the face of the U.S. response to the disease just a week ago.”
Trump denied the report without referring to it directly, but his quoting the word “sidelined” implies that he is responding to Politico, which used the same word in its headline.
“It is FAKE NEWS that [HHS Secretary Azar] is ‘sidelined’ from the great job he is doing on the CoronaVirus (sic) Task Force," Trump tweeted on Friday. "He has the total confidence of the [Vice President] and myself, and is doing a fantastic job, as the numbers would indicate!”
Trump signed a multi-billion dollar spending package to fight the spread of the coronavirus on Friday, the same day the number of coronavirus cases worldwide surpassed 100,000.
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