Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Won’t Shed Any Tears Over Dr. Anthony Fauci

Suffice to say Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won’t shed any tears over Dr. Anthony Fauci ending his half-century career with the federal government.

The 81-year-old Fauci, who ran the federal government’s infectious disease agency, announced Monday that his 50-year career in public health would end in December. He had previously said he would leave the government before President Joe Biden’s term ended, but had said exactly when.

Fauci first came to prominence during the spread of AIDS in the 1980s. But he took on superstar status among liberals when he became the face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and frequently served as the media’s favorite foil to former President Donald Trump.

Appearing on the Fox News Channel on Tuesday, DeSantis suggested the public had no reason to fawn over Fauci, given his performance during COVID.

He noted Florida has succeeded economically and in fighting the disease by not accepting all of Fauci’s recommendations.

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“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, that’s part of the reason why he’s advocated policies that have been so destructive,” DeSantis argued.

To support that, the Republican governor cited Fauci’s advice on closing schools and keeping kids masked up – which he advocated despite the medical evidence that said children were at minimal risk. Recently, reports have emerged discussing the learning lapses suffered by children in locked-down blue states, relative to the progress of students in states like Florida and Texas, which fought to put them back in the classroom.

“He cost people jobs. He destroyed people’s businesses with his policies. And he was never willing to admit he was wrong when it was clear those policies don’t work,” DeSantis told Fox News.

“It’s one thing when you’re in the thing when it just came out. It was a novel thing. There was a lot of information people needed,” said DeSantis. But Fauci made it clear, the governor added, that “(h)e thinks that people who disagree with him are somehow beneath him.”

Fox illustrated this by playing clips of Fauci proclaiming that he represented “science” and “truth.”

The Wall Street Journal hit on this in an editorial on Tuesday. “The fact that this [his retirement] is a major news story suggests the problem with his tenure. He became the main symbol of the rule by experts who imposed lockdowns on America and brooked no scientific debate on Covid.”

“We know now that states that locked down fared no better, and sometimes worse, than those that didn’t. We also know that the vaccines, while invaluable against serious disease, don’t prevent the spread of Covid—even after multiple boosters,” the Journal continued. “More honest candor would have been better for America’s trust in public-health authorities. … (H)is legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust government health experts in the same way again.”

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DeSantis also noted Fauci has never really explained his or the government’s role in gain-of-function research or whether COVID leaked from a Chinese lab.

The governor said he hopes that if Republicans take control after the November elections, they will “get to the bottom of everything, from the origins of COVID, to all the manifest failures of the public health establishment, particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.

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