Dr. Anthony Fauci rebuked Senator Rand Paul (RK) in a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday for inciting death threats against him and his family for “political gain” after Kentucky Rp bluntly blamed Fauci for all deaths from COVID-19 to the United States.
“What happens when he walks out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden it makes crazy people out there and I have threats to my life, harassing my family and my children with obscene phone calls, because people are lying about me, ”Fauci said at a hearing that was supposed to inform senators about the government’s response to emerging coronavirus options.
Paul launched a series of attacks on Fauci at the hearing, claiming that the infectious disease expert was actively working to censor other scientists and silence any investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. He went on to bluntly blame Fauci for every death in the U.S. from COVID-19.
“More people have died under President Biden now than under President Trump,” Paul said. “You are the one in charge. You are an architect, you are the chief architect in charge of the government, and now 800,000 people have died. “
“As usual, you misinterpret everything about me,” Fauci told Paul during the hearing. “You keep coming back to personal attacks on me that have absolutely nothing to do with reality.”
Fauci told the committee about a well-armed California man who was arrested on his way to Washington, D.C. last month after telling officers he intended to kill Fauci and President Joe Biden.
Fauci then showed printouts of Paul’s campaign website, which had the phrase “Fire Dr. Fauci” next to an invitation to deposit money.
“You are staging a catastrophic epidemic for your own political gain,” he told Paul.
The Republican senator and the country’s chief infectious disease expert have been arguing for over a year about the coronavirus and the efforts of public health experts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Paul urged Fauci to step down. Last summer, Fauci said during a hearing that Paul did not know what he was talking about after another exchange of views on the origin of the virus. As recently as November, Fauci said that Republicans like Paul were using him as a proxy for their anti-scientific attacks.
Fauci testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions along with Dr. Rochelle Walenski, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Dawn O’Connell.
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