Fauci Calls for Fox Host's Firing

Anthony Fauci says Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired immediately for violent rhetoric, though he doesn't have much hope that he will be. Fauci made the comment to CNN on Tuesday, a day after Watters appeared at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest conference, where he pushed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He encouraged attendees to "ambush" Fauci with questions about the National Institutes of Health's alleged funding of "gain-of-function" research at the lab, per Politico. "Now you go in for the kill shot," added Watters, who once praised the QAnon movement. "The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming."

"This is when you say, 'Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don't trust you, don't you?' Boom, he is dead! He is dead! He's done!" Watters went on, per the Daily Beast. He urged attendees to film such interactions and suggested Fox and its hosts would air the clips. "Get us that! That's what we want. That changes the whole conversation of the country," he said. "Just make sure it's legal." Fauci told CNN that he'd spent the past two years encouraging people "to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask ... and for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me?"

"That's awful that he said that. And he's gonna go, very likely, unaccountable," Fauci continued. "I mean, whatever network he's on is not going to do anything for him. I mean, that's crazy. The guy should be fired on the spot." President Biden's chief medical adviser also rebuked Fox News for not taking action against contributor Lara Logan when she compared Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele late last month. Fauci told MSNBC he was "astounded" that the network "can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action." Outlets report that Fox, which has yet to publicly comment on Logan, didn't return requests to comment on whether it would discipline Watters. (More Anthony Fauci stories.)