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]

IRS launches security review after threats, misinformation on social media

David Lawder via Reuters

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is reviewing safety and security measures in response to an "abundance" of threats and misinformation on social media about the agency and its employees, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a staff memo released on Tuesday.

Rettig said the steps include new risk assessments, monitoring perimeter security at facilities, designating restricted areas and reassessing exterior lighting and entrance security. The actions follow "an abundance of misinformation and false social media postings, some of them with threats directed at the IRS and its employees," he said.

Last week, President Joe Biden signed into law a sweeping climate, drugs and tax package that provides the IRS with $80 billion in new funding to beef up compliance and service over the next decade. The provision has prompted Republicans to claim that the IRS is hiring an "army" of 87,000 new agents to police tax collections

Will Megyn Kelly Bring The Hate Group Leaders And Extremists Who Frequented Her Fox Show To NBC?

ZACHARY PLEAT & CRISTINA LóPEZ G./Media Matters

In her past role at Fox News, new NBC News hire Megyn Kelly has invited onto her show a number of extremists and hate group leaders who spread and espouse anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant views, statements, and lies. Will she continue her practice of hosting bigotry in her upcoming daytime news and Sunday evening programs?

NBC News Hires Fox News’ Megyn Kelly As Daytime News Anchor And Prime-Time Magazine Show Host

Megyn Kelly To Anchor Her Own Daytime News And Sunday Evening Shows On NBC. NBC News announced January 3 that Fox News host Megyn Kelly will join the network and “become anchor of a new one hour daytime program that she will develop closely with NBC News colleagues.” She will also “anchor a new Sunday evening news magazine show and will become an important contributor to NBC’s breaking news coverage as well as the network’s political and special events coverage.” NBC News said details about her shows will be released in the coming months. [NBC News, 1/3/17]

Kelly Invited Onto Her Prime-Time Fox Show Hate Group Leaders And Other Extremists Dozens Of Times

Megyn Kelly Has Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Leader Tony Perkins At Least 34 Times. Kelly has regularly hosted anti-LGBTQ hate group leader Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), to speak as a “captain of the religious right.” FRC was labeled an anti-LGBTQ “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2010, a designation given to anti-LGBTQ organizations that either intentionally spread misinformation to advance their agenda or have worked to criminalize LGBTQ people. Perkins has called pedophilia “a homosexual problem,” claimed that gay men “recruit” children into homosexuality, and endorsed a Uganda law that would have imposed the death penalty for homosexuality. Kelly has described FRC as “a group whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and culture from a Christian worldview.” Kelly has also peddled Perkins’ talking points that “Christian beliefs and Christian rights” are being trampled as LGBTQ rights increase, lamenting that it must be “alienating” for him to be criticized for his anti-LGBTQ beliefs. Kelly also hosted Perkins to promote his book No Fear. [Media Matters, 4/11/16, 9/10/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Gave Anti-Immigrant Extremist Ann Coulter A Platform At Least 13 Times. Ann Coulter, whom SPLC refers to as a “white nationalist in the mainstream,” repeatedly appeared on The Kelly File to promote her extremist anti-immigrant views. According to SPLC, Coulter’s quotes are “strikingly similar” to “things [that] have been uttered by neo-Nazis and hardcore white nationalists.” In one of Coulter’s appearances, Kelly laughed off Coulter’s suggestion that then-presidential nominee Donald Trump should arrest undocumented journalist Jose Antonio Vargas. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 5/27/15; Media Matters, 7/23/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Has Hosted Anti-Muslim Hate Group Leader Brigitte Gabriel At Least Six Times. Kelly has repeatedly invited anti-Muslim leader Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT for America, to discuss terrorism on her show. SPLC reports Gabriel’s ACT for America floods “the American public with hate speech demonizing Muslims," and notes that it claims a “‘secret Islamification’ of the West” is occurring. SPLC also reports ACT once held a conference featuring a speaker who called news outlet Al Jazeera “the voice of Islamic terrorism.” Gabriel herself has called Arab people “barbarians,” claimed a practicing Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America,” and wrote, “In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream.” [Media Matters, 6/16/16; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 1/5/17, 2/17/16, 8/24/11; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted Jordan Lorence, VP Of The Anti-LGBTQ Group Alliance Defending Freedom, At Least Three Times. Kelly hosted a leader of the Alliance Defending Freedom at least three times. Established as the Alliance Defense Fund in 1994, ADF was founded by religious right leaders including Focus on the Family's James C. Dobson and Campus Crusade for Christ's Bill Bright. According to ADF's website, the organization changed its name to Alliance Defending Freedom in 2012 to highlight its "enduring mission to gain justice for those whose faith has been unconstitutionally denied in the areas of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family." ADF's relentless legal campaign against LGBTQ equality led SPLC to describe the organization as "virulently anti-gay." SPLC proved instrumental in exposing an aspect of ADF's efforts that the organization chooses not to tout on its website -- its international work to criminalize homosexuality. After a New Mexico photographer who refused to serve a same-sex couple unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court, Kelly invited ADF vice president Jordan Lorence -- who was representing the photographer in court -- on her show to stoke fears about the case, asking Lorence whether a loss for his client could lead to "a lawsuit by a gay couple” against a Catholic church. [Media Matters, 12/4/13; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted CIS’ Mark Krikorian, Part Of The “Nativist Lobby,” At Least Twice. Kelly at least twice hosted Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) -- founded by notorious nativist John Tanton -- which SPLC reports was created to give think tank-like credibility to the anti-immigrant “nativist cause.” SPLC also reports CIS releases studies with conclusions that are often biased to "blame immigrants for all of the U.S.'s problems" and claims that "are either false or virtually without any supporting evidence," noting that "CIS is not interested in serious research or getting the facts straight" and that it has “never found any aspect of immigration it liked.” Kelly hosted Krikorian twice in mid-2014, once to talk about President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, and once to ask him about witnessing a terror attack in Nice, France. Both times she introduced him as “the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies” without noting its problematic ties or studies. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/31/09; Media Matters, 1/17/13; Nexis, accessed 1/4/17]

Kelly Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver At Least Twice. Kelly has at least twice hosted the leader of Liberty Counsel, which is on SPLC’s list of active anti-LGBTQ extremists. SPLC wrote of its leader: “Mat Staver, the group's president, co-founder and former dean at the Liberty University School of Law, has claimed that with full marriage equality, everyone will decide to be gay and society will ‘cease to exist.’ (He also has linked homosexuality to rampant increases in disease, falsely linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claimed that homosexuality is the result of childhood sexual abuse.)” Kelly twice hosted Staver in September 2015 while he was representing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in her legal battle for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. [Media Matters, 9/11/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Activist James Dobson At Least Twice. Kelly at least twice hosted activist James Dobson, who, along with his Focus on the Family organization, is well-known for his extremist anti-LGBTQ views, according to SPLC. Focus on the Family is one of a "dozen major groups" that "help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade," it's a strong supporter of so-called ex-gay therapy, and Dobson has written that the “homosexual activist movement” is bent on “overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia” and that same-sex marriage would cause the fall of Western civilization. Kelly twice hosted Dobson and his wife in mid-2014 to talk about the National Day of Prayer event. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/22/16, 4/28/05; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Methodology: Media Matters searched Nexis transcripts for guest appearances on Fox News’ The Kelly File by select individuals and representatives of hate or extremist groups that have been profiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The search was filtered by editions hosted only by Megyn Kelly.