- Anthony Fauci blasted Rand Paul for attacking him for political gain.
- Paul and Fauci have a history of contentious exchanges over how Fauci is trying to help manage the pandemic.
- Fauci noted that police officers stopped a man who said he was going to kill the infectious disease expert.
Dr. Anthony Fauci tore into Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday, arguing that the Kentucky Republican's attacks on Fauci's role in the pandemic response are designed for political gain and exacerbate death threats against him and his family.
"What happens when [Paul] gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that it kindles the crazies out there and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me," Fauci said at the end of a heated back-and-forth.
Fauci pointed out that a California man was arrested in Iowa late last year and according to police told officers that he was on his way to Washington to kill Fauci, Biden, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Officers, The Des Moines Register reported, said the man claimed he was "the only person remaining who can free the United States of evil."
—CSPAN (@cspan) January 11, 2022
Fauci and Paul, who is an ophthalmologist, have tangled repeatedly in the past with each interaction seemingly getting more hostile and personal. Paul and other Republicans have lit into Fauci for months and called for his firing, a point Fauci illustrated by holding a printout from Paul's campaign website.
"You have politically attacked your colleagues and in a politically reprehensible way you have attacked their reputations," Paul said talking over Fauci before Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate's health committee, cut them off.
Paul responded after the hearing by tweeting a screenshot of Fauci holding up the print-out.
—Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 11, 2022
In their first tussle of 2022, Paul largely rehashed his past criticism of Biden's top health advisor, pointing to Fauci's previously released emails.
In this case, Paul referenced an exchange Fauci had with National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins about pushing back on the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 effort by three scientists and a libertarian think tank to push for allowing COVID-19 to spread largely unabated among healthy people while trying to keep more vulnerable Americans from contracting the virus. The declaration, The Washington Post reported, rejected the consensus view of health experts who feared millions of Americans would die if the Trump White House followed the recommentdaion given that the debate occurred before a vaccine was ready.
Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and one of three involved in drafting the declaration, previously called Collins' email a "propaganda attack by my own government."