A top advis­er in the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vice tried to get Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci to par­rot a polit­i­cal mes­sage on coro­n­avirus instead of a sci­en­tif­ic one, emails obtained by Politi­co reveal.Paul Alexan­der, a senior advis­er to HHS’ assis­tant sec­re­tary for pub­lic affairs Michael Caputo, report­ed­ly tried to shape Fauci’s pub­lic med­ical advice via the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health’s press office. Alexander’s emails touched on every­thing from mask wear­ing to COVID-19 test­ing, and often “con­tra­dict main­stream sci­ence while pro­mot­ing” the Trump administration’s posi­tions, Politi­co writes.In an Aug. 27 reply to Fauci’s planned com­ments ahead of an inter­view with Bloomberg, Alexan­der said he dis­agreed “vehe­ment­ly” with “kids get­ting test­ed and repeat­ed­ly and even uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in a wide­spread man­ner.” Wide­spread test­ing is a big key to stop­ping COVID-19 surges and virus spread alto­geth­er. And before an MSNBC inter­view on Tues­day, Alexan­der told the NIH press office to “ensure Dr. Fau­ci indi­cates masks are for the teach­ers in schools. Not for chil­dren.” He false­ly said “there is no data … that shows chil­dren” can spread COVID-19 “to oth­er chil­dren, or to adults.“Fauci denied to Politi­co that any­one told him to with­hold cer­tain med­ical advice, and said he had­n’t seen Alexander’s emails. “No one tells me what I can say and can­not say. I speak on sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence,” he said. Alexan­der and the NIH did not respond to a request for comment.The report comes just after The Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished an excerpt of Bob Woodward’s forth­com­ing book, in which Pres­i­dent Trump said he tried to “play down” the coro­n­avirus’ risks ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic. Fau­ci crit­i­cized Trump for spread­ing false­hoods dur­ing a press brief­ing, Wood­ward report­ed, while the president’s top aides bris­tled at his harsh words.More sto­ries from theweek.com Fau­ci report­ed­ly slammed Trump’s lead­er­ship as ‘rud­der­less’ behind his back — and crit­i­cized him to his face too The true Elec­tion Day night­mare sce­nario More than half of house­holds in 4 largest U.S. cities strug­gled finan­cial­ly dur­ing pan­dem­ic, poll shows