Dr. Anthony Fauci has been in his position as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "much too long" and should "just retire" to Florida, which has the lowest COVID-19 case and death numbers in the United States, Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Newsmax Tuesday.
"He knows the agency he has led has invested U.S. taxpayer money into gain of function research, and now he doesn't want people to be aware of that," the Tennessee Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," while accusing the doctor of covering up for himself and slamming the politically charged comments Fauci made in a Sunday interview.
"It is time for him to leave his job," she added. "It is time for him to move on. What we need to do is get to the bottom of how this started. What are the origins of this particular strain of coronavirus? This is ... something that we're going to have to handle, learn how to manage, and unfortunately, live with like we do the common flu."
During an interview with CBS News Sunday, Fauci said that "anybody who spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and the congressional committees and the Rand Pauls and all that other nonsense, that’s noise."
And when he was asked about Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his call for an investigation, Fauci said that he would "have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, Senator?"
Blackburn said that Fauci has been slamming anyone who questions his judgment for months and that he has accused her and others of "criticizing science" when they criticize him.
"Well, newsflash to Dr. Anthony Fauci; he is not science. What he has done over the course of the pandemic is to turn himself into a politician and a pundit thinking he can belittle people," said Blackburn. "The American people have looked at him. They watched him and they formed an opinion of him. They found him to be untruthful. And they don't consider his advice to be something that they should be following because he's been all over this."
Meanwhile, Blackburn slammed President Joe Biden's call for shot mandates, accusing him of wanting people to be fired while allowing immigrants to stream across the nation's border without having had COVID testing.
"They are put on planes. They are flown around the country, and when you're coming out of McAllen, Texas, you may have been out working with the Border Patrol at night and then the next morning, there are people on your flight out of McAllen that you saw the Border Patrol apprehended.
"This is how quickly they are processing people and moving them around the country. It is what every state's a border state, every town is a border town, and it's also when you continue to see the spread of COVID-19."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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