Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.”įauci’s Republican critics are quick to point out the times he’s been wrong, such as early during the pandemic when he and other health officials initially counseled against wearing masks. “I think that’s one of the unfortunate realities of our new performance politics,” he added, warning “there’s no question” that attacks on public health officials are undermining public confidence in health recommendations, such as advice to get vaccinated.įauci has not taken criticism from Paul without firing back, telling the Kentucky senator in a July hearing after Paul suggested he had lied to Congress: “Sen. Romney acknowledged that efforts to demonize Fauci “seems to be working politically.” “I think probably he’s been trying to explain a very hard thing for a long time and a lot of circumstances change and that’s a tough place to be.” “I’ve known him a long time and I like him, and I’ve admired his work with vaccines,” he added of Fauci. Roy Blunt (Mo.), the ranking Republican on the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee. “I think everybody’s had a really challenging job with a virus that we are still struggling to understand, and both the data and the science appear to be constantly changing so everybody in those discussions can easily find themselves in a tough place,” said Sen. Other Senate Republicans are also distancing themselves from the attacks on Fauci. Politicizing him is just par for the course these days in our highly politicized environment, but I respect him as a scientist,” he added.
He’s not perfect like all humans he will make mistakes. Fauci as an expert in disease and viruses respect his point of view. Mitt Romney (Utah) when asked about the salvos directed at Fauci from fellow Republican senators. “A lot of politics today is performance politics, which is saying things which excite the bases of our respective parties,” said Sen.
Some Republicans have long worried the attacks by their colleagues could undermine trust in public health officials and their own efforts to boost vaccination rates across the country. The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum were among those condemning the remarks, which it said were “exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful.” Lara Logan, a host on Fox News Media’s streaming service, on Monday compared him to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who worked at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. One such retweet circulated a article in which Cruz calls Fauci “the most dangerous bureaucrat in the history of America” and says he could face prison time for denying that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had funded gain-of-function virus research at a lab in Wuhan, China.Īttacks on Fauci over the past 18 months have often been ugly and have led to concerns for his safety. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had tweeted or retweeted something critical about Fauci at least 20 times since Monday. Ted Cruz (Texas), another 2016 GOP presidential candidate who many think will run again, has led the GOP charge. Cotton is seen as a potential presidential candidate, while Paul was defeated in the 2016 GOP primary by Trump. Republicans have long seen Fauci as a useful punching bag given the public’s fatigue with the coronavirus, and his standing as a health care adviser to President Joe Biden has made him more of a partisan figure this year.Ĭotton on Tuesday said, “Tony Fauci is nothing more than a Democratic operative,” a sentiment that appears to be growing in GOP circles.Ĭriticism of Fauci has served as a sure-fire way to rev up the GOP’s conservative base and appeal to former President Donald Trump, offering an incentive for GOP senators with national ambitions to take their shots. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) grumbled that the comments were “just another example of how these bureaucrats think that they are the science, that they represent the epitome of knowledge.” Cotton swipes at Fauci: ‘These bureaucrats think that they are the science’