Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said that Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired for using violent language at a conservative conference to encourage attendees to conduct an ambush interview with him in hopes of creating a viral moment
"I mean, that's crazy," Fauci added. "The guy should be fired on the spot."
Fox News defended Watters. A spokesperson said in a statement, "Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context."
Watters made his remarks Monday at the right-wing Turning Points USA conference where he gave students a playbook on how to record a viral moment that Fox News would air and that other right wing outlets would amplify.
"Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming," Watters said.
Fauci reacted with shock to the "awful" comments on Tuesday, but also acknowledged that it's "very likely" Watters would go "unaccountable" at Fox News.
"The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask," Fauci said on "New Day."
"And for that," Fauci continued, "you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?"
Watters' comments come just weeks after Lara Logan, another Fox News personality who hosts a show on the channel's streaming network, compared Fauci to a Nazi doctor infamous for experimenting on prisoners at the Auschwitz death camp.
At the time, Fauci called out Fox News for staying silent and not commenting on Logan's comments.
"What I find striking, Chris, is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network," Fauci said at the time to MSNBC host Chris Hayes. "How they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action. I'm astounded by that."
Fauci says Fox News
and RFK Jr. attacks
'accelerated' death threats
Dr. Anthony Fauci says he and his family continue to receive death threats amid inflammatory statements made by critics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaxxer whose new book is filled with wild claims attacking the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
“It’s very unfortunate because I don’t think he is inherently malicious,” Fauci said of Kennedy in a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo News on Tuesday. “I just think he’s a very disturbed individual.”
The former environmental lawyer’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” was published last month.
“It’s a shame because he comes from such an extraordinarily distinguished family, many members of whom I know personally,” Fauci continued. “I was very close to Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was such an extraordinary person and a real warrior for public health and to have RFK Jr. just spouting things that make absolutely no sense ... I’m so sorry that he’s doing that.”
Fauci added: “Not just because he’s attacking me — that seems to be the rage among some people — but because ultimately it is going to hurt people.”
His comments came a day after Fox News host Jesse Watters encouraged attendees at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference to “ambush” Fauci with questions about the National Institutes of Health’s alleged funding of “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
“Now you go in for the kill shot,” Watters said. “The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming.”
Fauci told Yahoo News that such statements are often followed by death threats.
“It even gets accelerated when you have the inflammatory statements that are made, [by] people like RFK Jr. and some of the Fox media personalities,” Fauci said, adding that he finds it “strange that they go unchecked with no consequences for people to say that.”
“And when they do that publicly, that’s when I get more death threats and people harass me, my wife and my children,” he added.
“The only thing I’ve ever said or done is to encourage people to get vaccinated, to wear a mask and to do things that would be good for their health, the health of their family and the health of the community,” he said. “So to get villainized because of that is a sad testimony on our society.”
Fauci was also asked whether he believes former President Donald Trump has the power to change minds among his supporters who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“I would think so, because of so many followers that he has — people who hang on his every word,” Fauci said.
In a live interview with Bill O’Reilly on Sunday, Trump revealed that he received a COVID-19 booster shot after previously saying he was not going to get the additional dose — and was booed by a smattering of those in attendance.
“One of the things that surprised me is that when he publicly made that statement, he was actually booed by his followers,” Fauci said. “Which tells me that the depth of the divisiveness in society, where people are so intent on not doing something almost for ideological reasons, without dropping back and taking a look at the big picture — that it’s for one’s own good to protect one’s self, to protect one’s family, but also for your communal responsibility to not allow this virus to run rampant through society.
“So I was pleased that the former president said publicly that he was vaccinated and boosted,” Fauci added. “I was dismayed that even his own followers booed him. It was rather disturbing to see that.”
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