Dr. Anthony Fauci deserves to be fired because his evasion of the truth has infected the public health system with a loss of credibility, according to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci became America’s go-to expert when the coronavirus emerged in China.
In recent weeks, Fauci’s image has become tarnished as new evidence has connected him to the Wuhan Institute of Virology amid increasing acceptance of a theory that the coronavirus escaped from the lab.
Fauci, who had initially rebuked and demeaned anyone who promoted that theory, has now admitted it needs to be investigated as a possibility.
Some Republican senators, including Rubio, have called for Fauci to be dismissed.
Rubio outlined his reasons for wanting to fire Fauci during his Thursday appearance on the Fox News show “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
Rubio said his attitude with Fauci has changed over time.
“Here’s what’s happened with Dr. Fauci, who I didn’t dislike and actually defended early on in the pandemic,” Rubio said.
But that was before Fauci emerged as a darling of the liberal media.
“And that is he’s now you know, he’s gotten on the cover of magazines. He’s become this national figure. He enjoys, I think, a little bit the celebrity that’s come with it. And the role that he’s played, almost like a super political, super governmental role is the central authority that everybody has to listen to. I think he’s gotten, you know, high on his own supply a little bit here in regards to this,” he said.
“I think it’s gone too far.”
Fauci recently rebuked critics, saying that any attack on him was actually an attack on science itself.
“You see the statements he’s now making. He sounds more like a political figure than he does like a health care expert. But that’s not the reason he should be fired,” Rubio said.
Fauci has given Americans a reason to disbelieve what medical experts say, Rubio added.
“I think the reason he should be fired is because he’s lost a tremendous amount of credibility among the American people. I think he’s actually done very significant damage to public health people,” he said.
“The next time we have a pandemic people are going to remember a time in an era where Dr. Fauci knew certain things that we now knew he did, and he either kept them from the American people or lied by omission, for example, on discrediting anyone who even raised the possibility that COVID originated because it was an accident in a lab in Wuhan, China,” Rubio said, noting that there were other possible reasons, a point Fauci has since hinted he could embrace.
Hitting on the theory that the virus jumped from bats to humans, Rubio noted that China has “still not produced the animal that it jumped over from and we know that in the laboratory that, coincidentally, happens to be located in that city, they conduct experiments on how you can genetically change a virus that occurs naturally to make it infectious and to even make it more infectious to humans.”
Rubio said that Fauci “knew all this. And he tried to lie or lie by omission.”
Rubio said that contrary to Fauci’s claim that he is the voice upholding science, the opposite is true.
“He’s lost all credibility and not just in my mind, the mind of a lot of Americans. He’s now actually doing harm to science. He’s not helping science.”
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has said Fauci’s record speaks for itself.
“Dr. Fauci has lost the confidence of the American people with his repeated evasions, misdirection, and politicized statements,” Cotton said in a recent interview. “If he won’t resign, Joe Biden should fire him.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
