During an MSNBC interview on Wednesday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that he was never against Donald Trump before belittling the former president’s supporters, saying that they don’t “understand” that science evolves.

“Yeah, I mean there is no doubt there are people out there, for one reason or another, resent me for what I did in the last administration, which was not anything that was anti-Trump at all,” Fauci told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. “It was just trying to get the right information, to try and get the right data. What they didn’t seem to understand —I guess that it is understandable that they didn’t understand it— that science is a dynamic process.”

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“So something that you know in January—you make a recommendation or a comment about it. But as you get more and more information, the information leads you to change,” he added. “Because that is what science is, it is a self-correcting process. So when you hear someone say something at one point, then two or three months later, if you stick with what you said at the original time when you had one-fifth the amount of data that you have now, I think that would be inappropriate.”

“It is appropriate, although sometimes it is difficult for people to understand, how as you learn more and more, you have to continue to evolve with the data,” Fauci continued. “That is what I was trying to do, is always tell the truth on the basis of what the data is. It was never deliberately something against the president.”

Fauci then referenced the Freedom of Information Act release of thousands of pages of his emails, saying, “In fact, you spoke about my emails, if you look at my emails, I never in the emails said anything derogatory about President Trump.”

During Trump’s presidency, it often appeared to many that he and Fauci had a relationship that was contentious at times. Fauci has also become somewhat of a liberal darling over the past year.