President Donald Trump on Monday retweeted a right-wing game show host’s COVID-19 conspiracy theory that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and doctors are lying to influence the election, presumably against Trump.
Chuck Woolery, the 79-year-old former host of “Love Connection” and “Wheel of Fortune,” was already receiving massive clapback on social media for his tweet Sunday night before Trump even got to it.
“The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying,” he wrote. “The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.”
Then Trump retweeted the post, apparently supporting the TV personality over epidemiologists and other medical experts, including those on his own coronavirus task force. The move put his strategy for coping with the resurging pandemic into stark relief once again.
His retweet came on the heels of a New York Times report about the White House’s attempt to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert and a member of Trump’s task force. Fauci has urged people to wear masks and practice social distancing to help reduce the spread of the virus, and he has cautioned states against reopening in defiance of the president.
Florida set a single-day state record of more than 15,000 new cases on Sunday, the Times reported. New York’s high during the initial surge of the pandemic was more than 12,000.
Underscoring the administration’s reported campaign against Fauci, Trump on Monday also retweeted a post from April that criticized Fauci.
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