Ron DeSantis is glad Anthony Fauci’s leaving, but says the ‘damage’ is already done
Ron DeSantis. Image via Fox News Channel

Ron Desantis - Fox News
'He thinks that people who disagree with him are somehow beneath him.'

Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated the imminent December departure of Dr. Anthony Fauci in an interview Tuesday.

DeSantis has made trolling and baiting Fauci central to his strategy counter-messaging the federal government’s COVID-19 guidance for years. He offered familiar criticisms of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during a Fox and Friends hit.

“I think he’s done a lot of damage. I think he should have been gone long ago. And if you think about what he’s done with his arrogance, it’s part of the reason he’s advocated policies that have been so destructive,” DeSantis argued

“He thinks that people who disagree with him are somehow beneath him,” DeSantis lamented, saying Fauci “was never willing to admit he was wrong when it’s clear those policies don’t work.”

DeSantis urged that if Republicans take control of Congress, they should “get to the bottom of everything” related to COVID-19, “particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

Indeed, even as the pandemic has waned in public consciousness, DeSantis has nonetheless targeted Fauci rhetorically, including as recently as this month when he lambasted the doctor not for COVID-19 but for alleged AIDS policy recommendations decades ago.

We are not going to be like Fauci in the ’80s, claiming that families could get AIDS by sitting and watching TV together,” DeSantis said about monkeypox at a press conference in Rockledge on Aug. 3, where he and state health officials were addressing opioid treatment.

After asking the Governor’s Office for clarification of DeSantis’ reference, they sent a link to a long-form 1983 interview with Fauci where he said the “full extent of transmissibility” of the disease was not known.

The Governor has sold merchandise yoked to Fauci’s “flip flops” on issues, bashed him during interviews for doing too many interviews, and characterized the advisor to seven Presidents as “intimately involved” in New York’s decision to send COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes during the height of the pandemic.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


10 comments

  • Impeach Biden

    August 23, 2022 at 11:08 am

    Fauci is a political hack. Good riddance and looking forward to the hearings on that old fool

    • Bill

      August 23, 2022 at 11:33 am

      He wasn’t a political hack until covid became political and I’m sure if republicans get the house, we’ll have nothing but hearings all day every day ’cause, you know, it’s easier to complain than actually do something.
      So after serving as a distinguished scientist and epidemiologist for 50 odd years, and doing the legwork to make mRNA vaccines possible, you think he’s ‘just an old fool’ – what exactly have you or desantis accomplished recently?

    • Nojabsever

      August 24, 2022 at 8:56 am

      Amen!

      Fauci needs to be investigated and prosecuted. The list is too lengthy to state here. Congress also needs to investigate all those Americans, young and old, who have died from adverse reactions to the “vaccine.”

      • Dana

        August 29, 2022 at 2:21 am

        Absolutely, 100% agreed. He is a liar and no one will defend this man when the effects of the vaccines can’t be hidden anymore. May truth prevail over the responsibility Fauci has in countless injuries and death.

    • Hope

      August 27, 2022 at 10:58 am

      Agreed!!

  • Frankie M.

    August 23, 2022 at 11:27 am

    I think Fauci looks down on people like DeSantis who politicize everything for fundraising purposes & spell science with a y.

  • John Doe

    August 23, 2022 at 11:53 am

    Whyyyyyy do democrats love Fauci? It’s hard to admit that you were a fool who was duped by a government bureaucrat for years, and fell for his propaganda. That’s also why they despise DeSantis: His policies PROVED to any reasonable person that Dr. Fraudci was wrong and that also proves that those same Democraps got duped by that old fool.

    • Bill

      August 24, 2022 at 7:46 am

      I’m not a democrat but how exactly was anyone duped? The CDC made recommendations that you could either follow or not. Restaurants near me stayed open per desantis and staff died from covid (young, healthy people). It’s a choice and I’m pretty sure the families of the people who died probably aren’t desantis fans. They were just folks trying to make a living in the face of something we’ve not seen in 100 years but conservatives need someone to blame I guess.

  • tjb

    August 24, 2022 at 11:10 am

    Let’s look at the damage our great governor, Ron DeSantis has done.

    Florida has 6.5 % of the USA population and 9.2 % of the Covid deaths. Got to love DeSantis, he has given us the freedom to die maskless and unvaccinated.

  • Chris

    August 31, 2022 at 5:47 pm

    Your an idiot… Who do you think help China come up with the virus…. Dr Shit for Brains himself a Long with the Corrupt Communist DEMOCRAP party … Will Do ANYTHING TO KEEP IN POWER AND CONTROL OVER YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE. WAKE THE FUCK UP. IT WAS EASY FOR THE COMMUNIST TO TAKE OVER OUR COUNTRY … THEY BOUGHT OUT THE DEMOCRAP PARTY … LOOK IT UP… BIDEN FOR 40 + YEARS HAS BEEN SELLING OUR COUNTRY OUT AND PROFITING BIG TIME.

Comments are closed.


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