Dr Anthony Fauci has accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of inspiring death threats against him.
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases clashed with the Republican firebrand lawmaker at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on Monday in which he gave testimony about the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the hearing, Greene told Fauci he was “not a doctor” and that he “belonged in prison” for “crimes against humanity” amid heated questioning. She also accused him of experimenting on beagles with disease-causing parasites.
“As a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting and evil, what you signed off on, and these experiments that happened to beagles paid for by the American taxpayer,” she said. “And I want you to know that Americans don’t pay their taxes for animals to be tortured liked this.”
Following the hearing, Fauci appeared on CNN to slam Greene for her commentary on the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing her of “unusual” antics that could inspire death threats against him.
“Whenever somebody gets up, whether it’s the news media you know, Fox News does it a lot or it’s somebody in the Congress who gets up and makes a public statement that I’m responsible for the deaths of x number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus — immediately — you could like clockwork, the death threats, go way up,” Fauci said during an appearance with Kaitlan Collins on CNN.
“So that’s the reason why I’m still getting death threats when you have performances like that unusual performance by Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
He went on to criticise Monday’s hearing for “the level of vitriol” that played out on the Congress floor.
“I have testified literally hundreds of times over the last 40 years, over Congress and there’s always been differences of opinion, differences of ideology and things like that,” he said. “But the level of vitriol that we see now just in the country in general — but actually played out during this hearing was really quite unfortunate.
“Because the purpose of hearings are to try and figure out how we can do better so that next time if and when we all faced with a pandemic we’d be better prepared and we could benefit if mistakes were made; we identify them and we try to correct them for the future,” he added.
Republicans have sought to prove that Fauci tried to suppress information about the origins of Covid-19 and baselessly claim he funded research that triggered a pandemic that killed millions of people, with GOP lawmakers grilling Fauci on these accusations, which he has denied, on Monday.
Shortly after Greene’s questioning, Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, lambasted her line of questioning.
“That was completely irresponsible,” he said. “This might be the most insane hearing I’ve actually attended.”
Throughout the hearing, Garcia and other Democrats apologized to Fauci for attacks from Republicans, noting how he, his wife and daughters received numerous death threats.
The hearing was Fauci’s first public appearance on Capitol Hill since he left as the chief medical adviser for the Biden administration and as director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
