Right-wing media promise to harass Anthony Fauci in retirement if Republicans win back control of Congress

 ERIC KLEEFELD, BUSHRA SULTANA & SHELBY JAMERSON via Media Matters

 When presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci announced h

is plans to retire in December after five decades of public service, right-wing media personalities predictably attacked him, calling him a “sociopathic liar and political hack” who “needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” 

On Monday, Fauci announced he intends to step down as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In response, right-wing media mounted a public onslaught, claiming that Fauci is stepping down to avoid investigations if Republicans take control of Congress in November, directing the GOP to investigate Fauci if the party should take control, proclaiming Fauci should face criminal charges and be sent to prison, and generally attacking his character.

Even Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, who had previously served as a seeming voice of reason and who has previously interviewed Fauci at the network, pressed the retiring public servant about whether his retirement was really just “a way to avoid Republican investigators.”

Right-wing media, especially Fox News, have been maligning Fauci since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted, then-President Donald Trump’s “media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president,” whose administration’s response included recommendations of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures, “and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response.” The smear campaign against Fauci didn’t stop; over a roughly 10-month period in 2021, Fox News personalities attacked him over 400 times.
 
Fauci may plan to retire at the end of the year, but the right-wing echo chamber is prepared to hound him for years to come if given the opportunity.

Claims that Fauci is stepping down to avoid oversight

• Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson speculated that Fauci may have resigned because he thinks the Republicans are going to take over Congress in the midterm elections and does not want to be investigated by them. “So it's possible that Tony Fauci might want to resign before he has to explain all of that to a new Congress,” Carlson said. “He might want to get out of town now and move to, say, Cambridge, find a safe place to hide before the reckoning. Just a thought. Because honestly, there's a lot to answer for.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]
• Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham speculated that “Fauci thinks this retirement would save him from a congressional investigation or a subpoena.” She then interviewed Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said congressional Republicans would want to investigate Fauci based on the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was human-made. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton claimed, “Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Dana Loesch claimed Fauci “doesn't want that GOP-controlled House oversight.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed that Fauci “seems to think stepping down before Republicans take the House will get him off scot-free.” Watters made this pronouncement just hours after Fauci appeared on Fox and told Neil Cavuto that he would not avoid appearing before Congress. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]
• The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam: “BREAKING: Fauci to step down right before Republicans are expected to take control of Congress and commence investigations into his funding of the Wuhan Lab and pandemic response.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp claimed “it's no coincidence” that Fauci announced he will step down in December, noting that it “is right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Calls for congressional Republicans to investigate Fauci 

• Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity declared that “Fauci still needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” He then interviewed Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who predicted that if there is a Republican-controlled Congress, it would subpoena Fauci to testify next year. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/22/22]
• Fox’s “news side” presented a more respectable face for the right’s determination to investigate Fauci. Fox contributor Marc Thiessen discussed the need for an “after-action study” of the nation’s COVID-19 response, while blaming Fauci for various aspects of both the pandemic response and its economic consequences. Concluding the segment, co-anchor Bill Hemmer said that in “2023, I think we’ll see him again.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]
• Fox anchor Sandra Smith asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “What do you want to see happen as far as holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his actions during this pandemic?” Marshall then repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of covering up the supposed creation of COVID-19 in a lab, statements which Smith did not challenge. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/23/22; FactCheck.org, 5/19/22]
• Former White House adviser Peter Navarro said on Newsmax that the government should to “take that SOB’s passport” so Fauci cannot flee a Republican-led congressional investigation. Navarro himself was recently indicted for a charge of contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 8/22/22; NPR, 6/4/22]

Calls for Fauci’s to face criminal charges and/or prison

• “Stop the Steal” organizer Alex Bruesewitz wrote that Fauci “should be investigated, and quite frankly arrested, for what he put our country through.” [Twitter, 8/22/22; Media Matters, 7/27/22]
• Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk declared that Fauci “belongs in prison.” He continued, “Seize the passports. Freeze his pension, distribute it to his victims. Lawyer up. Time to hold him accountable for the last 3 years.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Clay Travis wrote that Fauci “belongs in prison,” claiming he is the “most destructive bureaucrat in United States history.” Travis also said Fauci’s “‘leadership’ on covid will — in the decades ahead — come to be seen as one of the greatest and most destructive failures in our nation’s history.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing podcasters Diamond & Silk: “Fauci doesn't need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Attacks on Fauci’s character

• In his opening monologue, Fox's Carlson said, “On some level, even Tony Fauci knows that Tony Fauci is in fact a dangerous fraud.” Carlson further elaborated that Fauci “has done things that in most countries at most times in history would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]
• Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Fauci an “authoritarian monster.” She claimed Fauci “led our country on a Chinese-style approach instead of an American-style where we look at science.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/23/22]
• Washington Examiner’s Haisten Willis described Fauci as someone some people “feel is … self-promoting, unaccountable, and even liable for helping start the pandemic.” [Washington Examiner, 8/22/22]
• Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen: “Never has anybody been so wrong about so much for so long and been so lionized as Anthony Fauci.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]
• Sean Duffy, Fox News contributor and former member of Congress, repeatedly accused Fauci of having “Chinese” principles instead of American ones in his supposed use of the power of government. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/23/22]
• Fox News’ Katie Pavlich said it is “sickening” the way Fauci supposedly let “power and fame” go to his head. Pavlich tweeted, “In March 2020 Fauci actually told the truth about who Wuhan coronavirus was deadly for, the elderly and those with comorbidities. He said it was ‘very clear.’ He also said drug store masks don’t work. Then, he got a taste of power and fame he just couldn’t let go. Sickening.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz on Fauci: “His half-century of ‘public service’ was a disaster for us. His handling of covid should be studied in the future as a blueprint of what not to do.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro called Fauci “a true douchebag.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 08/23/22]
• Right-wing media gadfly Benny Johnson called Fauci “the most evil and malevolent character in my lifetime.” [The Benny Show, via YouTube, 8/23/22]