The mainstream media and Democrats have done such a great job of pushing so much negative press about President Donald Trump that even Dr. Anthony Fauci is clapping back.

During an interview with Fox News, host Laura Ingraham asked Fauci about the administration’s plans to begin reopening the country and why some critics suggested the nation needs to remain largely shut down until an effective vaccine is available, which could take up to a year or two.

Fauci, an infectious disease expert and a key member of the president’s coronavirus task force, smacked that suggested down real quick and defended the president.

While still maintaining some mitigation efforts, Fauci said much of the nation could resume “a significant degree of normality” even before a vaccine is widely available.

Ingraham noted that Fauci himself had previously suggested that a vaccine would be necessary before the nation could return to normal, but the doctor explained how the gradual and phased nature of the administration’s guidelines for reopening would allow for a return to near-normality in the meantime.

He said that the White House guidelines were “a gradual process that takes into account that we have a heterogeneous dynamic of outbreaks throughout the country,” and also factored in that “California is really different than New Orleans, is really different than New York or Detroit, and places like Arkansas and New Mexico are very different.”

“So what this plan does, it creates a baseline of a starting point, which we call the gating, where you have to have a certain degree of indication that the outbreak is decreasing over a period of time,” he continued, noting that such a process would allow less impacted parts of the country to move forward sooner than other.

Ingraham then brought up presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who said, “This isn’t going to be over until we have a vaccine.”

Fauci said the public health crisis is “not going to be over to the point of our being able to not do any mitigation until we have a scientifically sound, safe and effective vaccine, but that does not mean that we can’t approach a significant degree of normality.”

“One of the things that we said very clearly, that throughout all of those phases, there’s a baseline level of care that we would have to be addressing that we didn’t have before we had this outbreak,” he continued. “So whether you’re on Phase 1 and still tightened up a bit or you’ve already graduated to Phase 3, there are still guidelines for all phases.”

He added that a key aspect of the guidelines is that they allow for close monitoring and rapid reaction by way of increased mitigation strategies to a resurgence of the virus in specific locations.

WATCH:

“It’s not going to be over to the point of our being able to not do any mitigation, until we have a scientifically sound, safe, and effective vaccine. But that does not mean we can’t approach a significant degree of normality.”

— Dr. Faucipic.twitter.com/mFob0Mo7tu — 2020 (@mrw92_) April 20, 2020

This is great news that flies in the face of the media’s narrative of doom and undermines the argument that lockdowns must be maintained in perpetuity until a vaccine becomes widely available.

This also comes after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and his left-wing allies have already announced a new investigation into the president.