Outgoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that billionaire Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk's recent post on his platform saying, "My pronouns are prosecute/Fauci," is "a distraction," and called Twitter a "cesspool of interaction."
"I don't respond to Musk," Fauci, who has also been a chief medical adviser for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump through the COVID-19 pandemic, told political commentator David Axelrod while recording a podcast for release Thursday. "I don't pay any attention to him because that's merely a distraction. And if you get drawn into that, and I have to be honest, that cesspool of interaction, there's no value added to that. It doesn't help anything."
Axelrod, adviser to former President Barack Obama and now the host of "The Axe Files" podcast, appeared on CNN Monday night to discuss his interview with Fauci and the reaction he had to Musk's comment on the social media platform.
"Fauci was eager to not engage with Musk directly," Axelrod said during CNN's "Out Front" on Monday night. "But he did say there has been an erosion [in public discourse], and he lays that on social media."
Fauci started his career at the National Institute of Health more than 50 years ago, in 1968, and is the highest paid federal worker with a salary of $417,608 in 2019, according to Forbes.
His national profile raised dramatically through the COVID-19 pandemic with his role as chief medical adviser to both Biden and Trump, publicly disagreeing with Trump's attempts to reopen the country after a series of lockdowns in 2020, The New York Times reported.
He is also in the crosshairs of Republicans in Congress like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has accused Fauci of lying to Congress about the role his agency had in funding research at the Chinese Wuhan lab that may have been the origin of the virus that killed millions across the globe.
Fauci has vehemently denied the allegations.
Documents released in 2021, however, show Fauci's agency and the NIH did funnel grants to the lab where the virus may have originated, Newsweek reported in September 2021.
Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey told Newsweek that it appears Fauci lied to Congress when he denied funding the research that may have made the virus more contagious and deadly.
"The documents make it clear that assertions by NIH Director Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement in Wuhan are untruthful," Ebright told Newsweek.
The Biden administration criticized Musk for his tweet on Monday.
"They are disgusting, and they are divorced from reality, and we will continue to call that out and be very clear about that," Reuters cited White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters during Monday's briefing at the White House.