Retiring White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci's comments during his going-away press briefing this week about people choosing against getting COVID-19 vaccinations for political reasons were "divisive," Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told Newsmax on Thursday.
"I think the biggest takeaway at this point, having lived through all of the iterations of the coronavirus response, starting from the very beginning, is if going into 2023, you are sitting at home still looking to government and public health experts for directions and orders on how to live your life, you're doing it wrong," the Texas Republican, who as a former Health and Human Services chief of staff served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force with the retiring director, said on Newsmax's "National Report."
And as for the vaccines, "the most divisive action that anyone took at any point in this entire pandemic response" was to make the vaccines mandatory, and "force them on people who didn't want them," said Harrison.
"In many millions of cases," he added, people were forced to have vaccines who did not need to have them.
The Texas Legislature is working on a bill to ban COVID vaccination mandates, and the U.S. House, now that it's coming under a GOP majority, "needs to defund that type of tyranny and states across the country need to ban these mandates," Harrison said.
Meanwhile, the press conference became a source of controversy when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stepped in to defend Fauci after Daily Caller reporter Diana Glebova asked him a question about the origins of the COVID virus.
She also blocked the question about a lab leak being the starting point for the virus.
"I have nothing wrong with a government staffer trying to maintain order somewhere, but the most disrespectful thing that I witnessed there was the condescension that a government bureaucrat had for a member of the media trying to get legitimate answers to legitimate and pressing questions," Harrison said.
"The American people deserve nothing less than full and complete transparency. To my understanding, [Fauci] was still a government employee at the time of this press conference, so he could stay there as somebody who was still being at that time paid by the taxpayers."
The tussle, he added, was "emblematic of the way the Biden administration has treated the American people ever since they took over, with disdain, condescension, and a lack of transparency."
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