Trump's ongoing battle of words with Fauci is a modern version of Canute's contest of wills with the sea. The worrying thing is if there is a sense in which Trump can actually win it. Such a victory would carve out a zone where facts have no import whatsoever.
Fauci has as much scientific and for that matter moral authority behind him as is practically possible in today's world and is a savvy communicator. Furthermore, he almost literally stands up for facts.
There are maybe three senses in which Trump can chip away at him. The first is in the "Fox News" sense of ignoring the weight of evidence. "sometimes I say things are at least partially right, while on some occasions Fauci has said things which were at least partially wrong".
The second is the criticism of academics as peddling single issues, in saying that Fauci has too narrow a focus on health and that Trump is standing up for the economy etc.
The third is claim he did not give stark enough warnings early in the epidemic: actually this is true in some sense. People were not told "either change your life drastically now, and get this under control in a month (as China did) or suffer purgatory for a year".
However my experience is that at this stage in the epidemic the public were not vaguely ready to absorb this message and anyone who spoke in those terms was simply ignored. Fauci was for the most part as stark in his warnings as was possible given the constraints on him.
The thing is that like the sea, virus spread and facts of the epidemic are relentless and should make any such victories meaningless. Will the US actually get to 100,000 identified cases a day? Fauci's grim warning has already been proven to be a necessary one.
