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President Trump on Wednesday criticized congressional testimony delivered a day earlier by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who had warned against reopening the country too quickly and stressed the unknown effects the coronavirus could have on children returning to school. “I was surprised by his answer,” Mr. Trump told reporters who had gathered in the Cabinet Room for the president’s meeting with the governors of Colorado and North Dakota. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools.” (Rogers, 5/13)

The president accused Fauci of wanting “to play all sides of the equation,” a comment that suggested he is tiring of the nation’s top infectious disease expert. “I think they should open the schools, absolutely. I think they should,” Trump told reporters at the White House, echoing comments he had made in a television interview. “Our country’s got to get back and it’s got to get back as soon as possible. And I don’t consider our country coming back if the schools are closed.” (Freking and Colvin, 5/14)

The president, who previously made the strength of the economy central to his pitch for re-election in November, has encouraged states to reopen businesses and schools that were shuttered to halt the spread of the highly contagious respiratory disease. Fauci, 79, a proponent of the lockdowns, has become a target for criticism from the American far right and online conspiracy theorists since he made statements about the outbreak that were at odds with Trump’s. (Holland, 5/13)

While young people who don't have other health or immune system issues are at a significantly lower risk of dying from COVID-19, youth fatalities from the disease have been recorded, as have additional complications. This is not the first time Trump and Fauci have publicly disagreed on the nation's coronavirus response. Last month in an interview with CNN, Fauci seemed to imply that had the administration acted sooner to implement federal social distancing rules, fewer people might have died from the disease. (Wise, 5/13)

The president separately said in an interview with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo that “we have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open, we have to open our country." "Now we want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible, we can't keep going on like this … You're having bedlam already in the streets, you can't do this. We have to get it open. I totally disagree with him [Fauci] on schools,” the president added. (Samuels, 5/13)