Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said the USA Today op-ed that was written by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was “a major mistake on their part.”

Speaking to The Atlantic Council on Wednesday, Fauci said, “I think if you sit down and talk to the people who are involved in that list that came out, they are really, I think, taken aback by what a big mistake that was.”

“If you talk to reasonable people in the White House, they realize that was a major mistake on their part, because it doesn't do anything but reflect poorly on them,” he said.

The op-ed did not go through the normal sign-off process of being edited and approved by the White House press office, a White House official told CNN on Tuesday.

Fauci doesn’t think that was their intention, but said, “I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that. I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it’s only reflecting negatively on them.”

Fauci said he has no explanation for Navarro: “He’s in a world by himself. So I don’t even want to go there.”

Some in the White House have distanced themselves from Navarro's op-ed, but not, apparently, deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, who on Sunday posted a cartoon of Fauci on Facebook depicting him as a faucet washing the US economy down the drain.

https://abcnews.go.com/...ny/story?id=71794403

Just another week in the shit-show known as the Trump Administration...