Angry Trump denies plan to axe coronavirus doctor but signals new fights

A furious, aggrieved President Donald Trump has dismissed rumours that he was going to fire his top medical advisor on the coronavirus pandemic but launched new fights with the Democrats and the media ahead of the high-stakes reopening of the shuttered US economy.

Unusually, the evening briefing at the White House began with a statement by the internationally renowned Dr Anthony Fauci, seeking to defuse speculation that he had fallen out with the Republican president.

Referring to a CNN interview on Sunday in which he said that earlier mitigation measures would have dampened the escalation of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, Fauci explained that he'd been answering a "hypothetical."
Fauci explained his reference in the interview to "pushback" against shutting down the economy -- a remark interpreted widely as signalling that Trump was reluctant to take drastic action -- as the "wrong choice of words."