In an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, Fauci was asked if he was surprised that Trump wound up getting infected.

“Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said. “When I saw that on TV, I said, Oh, my goodness. Nothing good can come outta that, that’s gotta be a problem.’ And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event.”

Fauci was referring to the Rose Garden news conference in late September at which Trump announced that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to serve as a Supreme Court justice. Afterward, a number of people who participated in the event, including Trump, tested positive for COVID-19.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during the interview that Trump “sometimes equates wearing a mask with weakness,” which the doctor said doesn’t make sense. He said he believes Trump’s efforts to push back against his recommendations regarding the coronavirus pandemic has less to do with the president being “anti-science” and more with him making a statement.

“I think deep down, he believes in science. If he didn’t, he would not have entrusted his health to the very competent physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center,” Fauci said about Trump’s recent visit to the hospital to receive treatment for COVID, NBC News reported.

In the wide-ranging interview, Fauci discussed a Trump campaign ad that he says took his words from earlier this year being taken out of context. He told CBS that he “got really ticked off” about that.

He also said that the White House has blocked him from going on a number of shows that have requested interviews with him.

“I think there has been a restriction,” Fauci said. “But it isn’t consistent.”

The ad, released last week shortly after the president was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, touts the president’s response to the virus and includes an edited clip of Fauci that makes it seem as though he was praising Trump’s response to the pandemic.

In the 30-second spot, Fauci is heard saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.”

Fauci this week said his remarks, taken from a March interview, were in reference to fellow members of the White House coronavirus task force and other public health officials.

“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials,” Fauci said in a statement Sunday.

During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper the following day, Fauci said he thinks the campaign should take down the ad.

“I think it’s really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that,” Fauci said.

“It is so clear that I am not a political person, and I have never either directly or indirectly endorsed a political candidate, and to take a completely out-of-context statement and put it in … A political campaign ad, I thought, was really very disappointing,” Fauci said, The Hill reported.

The rebuke from Fauci comes as the president has repeatedly meddled with decisionmaking at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), often without much if any pushback from those agencies.

Trump has also lashed out at those agency heads, undermining their public messaging.

Fauci’s comments, however, mark the second time in as many weeks that he has publicly distanced himself from Trump.

During the first presidential debate, on Sept. 29, Trump suggested that his health officials have changed their minds about the benefits of masks during the pandemic, noting that the CDC has not always recommended the use of face coverings.

“Dr. Fauci said the opposite. He very strongly said masks aren’t good, and then he changed his mind. He said masks are good,” Trump said.

Fauci said later that week that his stance on the benefits of face masks was “taken out of context” and that the initial recommendation against widespread use of masks was due to a shortage for health providers.

He said scientists quickly changed their recommendations after realizing the extent to which asymptomatic spread was contributing to COVID-19 infections.

The Trump campaign’s use of Fauci’s remarks underscores how, more than six months into the pandemic, he is still viewed as a trusted source of information on the pandemic, in contrast to the president, who has faced harsh criticism throughout.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said he can understand why the Trump campaign would want to imply an endorsement from Fauci.

“Dr. Fauci is a valuable resource and a world-renowned expert, so people will try to have his reputation kind of shower on to them, even when it’s undeserved,” Adalja said.

Yet given Trump’s propensity to lash out and contradict even his own experts, Adalja said it was “baffling and paradoxical” that Trump would want that message in his ads.

The latest dispute between Fauci and Trump also underscores what’s been a complicated relationship throughout the pandemic.

As Trump spent much of the spring and summer downplaying the extent of the pandemic, Fauci sounded the alarm, at times directly contradicting the president.

In July, Trump publicly mused about Fauci’s high favorability ratings when his were so low.

Fauci has also come under attack from some of Trump’s aides and surrogates, with the White House at one point providing a memo to reporters detailing all the “wrong” statements Fauci had made about the pandemic.

Mark Rosenberg, an epidemiologist who ran the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control from 1994 to 1999, said he thinks Fauci has deftly walked a fine line between speaking up for science without openly criticizing Trump.

“I think he was critical of the people who put the ad together. I don’t think he personalized it … and said this was President Trump’s fault. I think he has found a way to stand up without incurring the wrath of Donald Trump,” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg added that he isn’t worried people might lose confidence in Fauci because of the ad since its clear Fauci is being used.

But with Trump trailing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in national and key battleground state polls, in large part because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Rosenberg said it’s likely Trump’s relationship with Fauci could deteriorate if those poll numbers decline further.

“The relationship will get worse, but I don’t think Trump will fire Fauci,” Rosenberg said, arguing a drastic action like that would just serve to highlight more of Trump’s failures.

Appearing on MSNBC, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, answered a question regarding journalist Bob Woodward’s bombshell reporting of Trump acknowledging that he was publicly downplaying the coronavirus while privately admitting its severity.

The president has said he intentionally minimized the danger of COVID-19 to not “create panic.”

“There were times I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we’re having a really serious problem, you know, and the president was saying it’s something that’s going to disappear, which obviously is not the case. So, there was and is some disagreements in what we say and what comes out in the White House,” Fauci said, USA Today reported.

“When you downplay something that is really a threat, that is not a good thing,” he continued.

Trump told Woodward in a recorded interview on Feb. 7 about how much “more deadly” COVID-19 would be than the flu, a startling juxtaposition from the president’s public remarks at the time and in the months since about COVID-19, its lethality and its spread.

For months in public, the president assured the public that the coronavirus was “under control” in the US and would “go away.”

Despite raising concerns with Woodward about coronavirus being transmitted through the air in early February, the president held six rallies indoors between Feb. 7 and March 2.

He stated at one of those rallies that COVID-19 would be gone by April because “in theory” once the weather warmed up, the coronavirus would “miraculously” go away.

The pandemic has caused more than 6.3 million confirmed cases and more than 191,000 deaths in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Trump has continued to push for seemingly unrealistic timelines for returning to normalcy. In interviews Friday, Fauci disagreed with the president’s claim the US is “rounding the corner.”

“If you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to COVID, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” Fauci said.

“I believe that we will have a vaccine that will be available by the end of this year, the beginning of next year, but by the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated and protected, that’s likely not going to happen till the mid – or end – of 2021.”

Trump has suggested that a vaccine may come before the Nov. 3 presidential election, calling it a “very special date.”

On Thursday, Fauci reiterated that the pandemic will not be going away soon.

“I just think we need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter, because it’s not going to be easy. We know every time we restrict, we lift restrictions, we get a blip. I mean … its whack-a-mole,” he said.

“We’ve been through this before. Don’t ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don’t try and look at the rosy side of things.”

On Friday, Fauci also noted attendees at Trump rallies, where masks are not required and often not worn, may not be safe just because the events are held outside.

“Just because you’re outdoors does not mean that you’re protected, particularly if you’re in a crowd and you’re not wearing masks,” he said.