White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said during an interview aired Sunday that criticisms of him from GOP Sens. Rand Paul (KY) and Ted Cruz (TX) are attacks on science.
When host Margaret Brennan asked Fauci during an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" about his response to personal attacks from Republican lawmakers, including Paul's demand that he resign over gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health in Wuhan, China, the top infectious disease expert said that such critique is just "noise."
"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, Margaret, that's noise. I know what my job is," Fauci said.
Brennan then noted that Cruz told the attorney general that Fauci should be prosecuted.
"Yeah. I have to laugh at that," Fauci said. "I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, senator?"
Lawmakers like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have called for Dr. Fauci to step down and be prosecuted over the course of COVID-19. Fauci scoffs at such threats, calling it "noise."
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 28, 2021
"They're really criticizing science because I represent science. That's dangerous." pic.twitter.com/zLzceD2DHe
Asked if he was being used as a scapegoat to deflect from former President Donald Trump, Fauci responded by saying, "Of course. You have to be asleep not to figure that one out."
He also said that he will be "saving lives" while critical Republicans are "lying" about him.
"All I want to do is save people's lives," Fauci said. "Anybody who's looking at this carefully realizes that there's a distinct anti-science flavor to this. So, if they get up and criticize science, nobody's going to know what they're talking about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there's a person there. There's a face, there's a voice you can recognize, you see him on television."
"So it's easy to criticize, but they're really criticizing science because I represent science. That's dangerous," he continued. "To me, that's more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. I'm not going to be around here forever, but science is going to be here forever. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave. And that's what I worry about."
Paul responded to Fauci's comments by taking issue with the claim that one individual could represent science.
"The absolute hubris of someone claiming THEY represent science," Paul said in a tweet. "It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity."
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