Dr. Anthony Fauci is out of here! The government’s top infectious disease expert, who guided an ungrateful nation through a global pandemic, told CNN Monday that he plans to retire by the end of President Joe Biden’s current term. He doesn’t have a specific date in mind and hasn’t started packing up his office or anything, but he’s said “that it is extremely unlikely” he’d continue in his position past January 2025.
You’d think rightwing Fauci haters would celebrate this news, but instead they see nothing but conspiracies. GOP Rep. Mary Miller from Illinois tweeted yesterday, “Dr. Fauci has to retire because he can’t keep explaining his contradictory and conflicting testimony to Rand Paul, Roger Marshall, Ronny Jackson, or any other doctor under oath!”
Yeah, so, Dr. Fauci is 81 years old. He’ll be 84 in January 2025. He’s older than Biden, who Republicans insist is mentally incompetent. He’s not resigning in disgrace, and he’s probably not afraid of the GOP Quack Caucus. I wish more elected officials of his generation would consider transitioning to a rose-smelling lifestyle. However, coup instigator Lauren Boebert, who’s somehow a member of Congress, won’t consider letting Dr. Fauci leave peacefully.
She tweeted: “Fauci thinks he’s just going to retire and move on with his life. Not on my watch. He belongs in jail.”
Sheriff Boebert here thinks she has a “watch.” She’s not going to let the 81-year-old career public servant move on with his life. How dare he sleep late and watch TV in his sweatpants when Boebert had to wear a mask inside a supermarket once. Boebert isn’t one of America’s great legal minds. She probably couldn’t even follow an average episode of “Law & Order.” But is it too much to ask that she at least come up with some actual crimes Dr. Fauci has committed before she suggests tossing an old man in jail?
She’s unfortunately not the only one shouting “Lock him up!” Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini said, “Fauci should spend the rest of his life rotting away in a federal prison,” and GOP congressional candidate Lavern Spicer declared that “we MUST throw Fauci’s corrupt ass in jail!”
PREVIOUSLY: Rand Paul Still Trying To Fire Dr. Fauci, Because What The F*ck Is Wrong With These People
Dr. Fauci’s retirement announcement takes the wind out of the GOP’s “Fire Fauci” movement. Sen. Rand Paul was especially eager to end the good doctor’s career. Republicans painted Dr. Fauci as a fascist bogeyman who imposed tyranny on innocent Americans. During a Senate hearing in January, Dr. Fauci called out how these ghouls fundraised off their attacks on him, even when this resulted in threats against his life and harassment of his family:
Now I guess you could say, well, that’s the way it goes, I can take the hit.
Well, it makes a difference because, as some of you may know, just about three or four weeks ago on December 21st, a person was arrested who was on their way from Sacramento to Washington DC at a speed stop in Iowa. And they asked, the police asked him where he was going, and he was going to Washington DC to kill Dr. Fauci. And they found in his car an AR-15 and multiple magazines of ammunition, because he thinks that maybe I’m killing people.
So, I asked myself, why would a senator want to do this? So go to Rand Paul’s website and see “Fire Dr. Fauci” with a little box that says, “Contribute here.” You can do $5, $10, $20, $100. So you are using a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain.
Republicans demonized a good man and perhaps accelerated his departure from public life. They won’t just take the win. They’ll make him put on a suit and drag him into a congressional hearing where they baselessly accuse him of creating COVID-19 in his mad science lab. This won’t reduce inflation but it’ll feed the worst impulses of the GOP electorate. Dr. Fauci deserves better.
[CNN]
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