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‘He’s A Menace’: Rand Paul Says He’s Proud To Raise Money In Efforts To ‘Fire Fauci’

   DailyWire.com
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 11: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questions Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The committee will hear testimony about the federal response to COVID-19 and new, emerging variants. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)
Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images

Senator Rand Paul doubled down Wednesday on his calls to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor “a menace.”

Just one day after their most recent confrontation — during a Senate hearing on the federal government’s continued response to the coronavirus pandemic — Paul joined Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer on “America’s Newsroom” to discuss the situation.

“When it comes to you and Dr. Fauci, we’ve seen a lot of these exchanges. Why is it so personal between you two?” Hemmer asked, noting that both Paul and Fauci had made accusations against each other during the hearing.

“Well, the thing is, he has made it very personal,” Paul replied, accusing Fauci of using his position to go after scientists who dared to disagree with him. “He makes over $400,000 a year to go after specific scientists, denigrate them, smear them, call them fringe. The three scientists he went after work at Stanford, Harvard and Oxford.”

“He was ready for that question yesterday and he hit you back,” Hemmer pointed out, saying that Fauci had slammed Paul for raising money on his website — where he also lists firing Fauci as one of his primary issues.

“He didn’t answer the question why is he smearing these three doctors? I’m proud of the fact people go to RandPaul.com raising money to fire Fauci because he is a menace,” Paul shot back. “Everything he said has been incorrect. And I think he is part of the problem. Even from the very beginning the fact that this virus came from a lab in Wuhan he has denied it and worked to cover it up and denigrated anybody who raises this question as a conspiracy theorist. So yes, he is a partisan politician and he has no place in any objective role over the pandemic and yeah, it’s a political thing. Whoever wins the election will make the decision whether he stays or goes or whether we investigate where the virus came from in the beginning.”

Paul’s main contention with Fauci during Tuesday’s hearing was that he had joined with former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins in supporting a “published takedown” of prominent epidemiologists who argued in favor of governments taking a more measured and targeted approach to the spread of the coronavirus.

As The Daily Wire reported:

“In an email exchange with Dr. Collins, you conspire, and I quote here directly from the email, to ‘create a quick and devastating published takedown’ of three prominent epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford,” Paul continued.

Fauci objected, saying that the email had been written by Collins — at which point Paul argued that Fauci could have responded differently instead of allowing the requested “takedown” to proceed.

“A published takedown, though, you know doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of a dispassionate scientist,” Paul added. “Instead of engaging them on the merits, you and Dr. Collins sought to smear them as ‘fringe’ and take them down — and not in journals, in lay press. This is not only antithetical to the scientific method, it’s the epitome of cheap politics, and it’s reprehensible, Dr. Fauci.”

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