I Questioned Anthony Fauci During COVID. What Rand Paul Did To Him This Week Was A Disgrace.
In 2020, I wanted answers. This week, Senate Republicans tried to destroy him for a viral clip.
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You’ve probably seen Anthony Fauci in the news this week. He sat alone at a Senate witness table while Republican senators cursed at him, mocked him and threatened to put him in jail. Watching it, I thought back to my exchange with him during COVID, when I was in Congress.
I questioned Anthony Fauci under oath at the height of the pandemic on June 23, 2020. I said we needed to learn more about what the Chinese Communist Party knew, what it withheld and how that affected our ability to respond. Then I asked Fauci how antibody testing could improve our understanding of asymptomatic infections and help identify populations at risk.
Fauci answered my questions responsibly, explaining why surveillance studies mattered and what scientists were learning about transmission by people without symptoms. The exchange was calm and technical. I wasn’t trying to produce a viral moment, though you can watch the exchange below. I simply wanted to understand how the virus was spreading.
Six years after my exchange with Fauci, Republicans brought him back before Congress to berate him. Rand Paul, who had already said that Fauci “should go to prison,” subpoenaed an 85-year-old retired scientist and demanded answers that could expose him to prosecution. When Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment, Paul announced plans for a contempt vote. Josh Hawley asked him what day it was and what color his tie and the carpet were. Bernie Moreno told him, “Who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?” When Fauci’s lawyer tried to object, Paul had him removed from the room.
It was a disgrace.
I sat through plenty of partisan hearings, but I never saw a chairman call for a witness to be jailed, force him to testify and then condemn him for using his right not to incriminate himself. It made me angry, but mostly it made me sad.
Call me naive, but I thought the purpose of a congressional hearing was to get answers and hold officials accountable. But Republicans held this one to humiliate an 85-year-old man in front of the entire country. Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in a single deposition in 2022, and Republicans defended him for doing so. At Fauci’s hearing, they scolded Fauci for doing the same thing. Watching it reminded me of how much the Republican Party has changed for the worse.
Paul had spent years saying Fauci should be prosecuted. Then, when Fauci was finally under oath, Paul acted as if Fauci’s non-answers were proof of his guilt. It was the same trap used in the anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s: answer and give prosecutors something they might use against you, or stay silent and be branded guilty. Paul spent years promising that Fauci would end up behind bars, released 1,141 pages of his unredacted diary and then summoned him under oath to see whether he might say something that could land him in jail.
The diary entries are embarrassing in places. Fauci plainly enjoyed some of the attention he received. But some entries that Paul presented as evidence of a cover-up were consistent with what Fauci said publicly at the time. Paul released the diaries to embarrass Fauci. The hearing spent more time on Fauci’s vanity and famous acquaintances than on anything that would better prepare us for the next pandemic. The Republicans got the dopamine hits and viral video clips they wanted. But what did the country learn? Very little.
Republicans talk about Fauci as though his career began during the pandemic. We should remember his whole career. He led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years and advised seven presidents. Trump gave him a Presidential Commendation because of his work on Operation Warp Speed—one of the administration’s rare achievements.
To be sure, Fauci, like everyone else, made mistakes during COVID. Even so, the attempt to cast him as a uniquely evil figure is absurd. He did the best he could in a crisis where the facts changed quickly, every decision carried consequences and the president routinely said outrageous things that his medical advisers had to correct. What made Fauci unforgivable to MAGA was that he contradicted Trump in public. In the MAGA world, that is a cardinal sin.
Fauci also became the face of the rules people hated. He went on TV and talked about all the things he would force people to do and not do. He told people they had to wear masks and practice social distancing. He said that things may not return to normal quickly. He spoke with the authority of the federal government at a time when millions of Americans had stopped trusting it. The mainstream press treated him like a hero. Brad Pitt portrayed him on Saturday Night Live, removed his wig at the end and thanked the real Fauci for his “calm” and “clarity.” That attention made Trump’s supporters hate him even more.
I am reminded of something that Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” Fauci gave Republicans one person to blame for everything they think they remember about 2020. They could pin the masks, school closures, and lost jobs on Fauci. That allowed them to conveniently forget who was president at the time.
Republicans need Fauci to be guilty because it allows them to simply say that an arrogant bureaucrat lied to the country, closed the schools, forced everyone to wear a mask, and misled the president. It wasn’t Trump’s fault. It was Fauci’s. Trump just trusted the wrong doctor, and as a result the pandemic cost him an election he otherwise would have won.
Congress should examine the decisions made by Trump, Fauci, governors, and public-health officials. Some of their decisions made sense based on what they knew at the time. Others look ridiculous in retrospect. Some caused real harm. But blaming everything on Fauci is absurd. It may rile up the base, but it doesn’t tell us what actually went wrong.
Maybe I am mourning a Republican Party that never really existed, but I remember when questioning a witness meant listening to his answer. There was a time when the answers mattered more than the questions.
When I questioned Fauci in 2020, I expected him to answer me, and I listened when he did. That should be unremarkable. When we face our next public-health crisis, Americans will need experts willing to give advice in public. After watching what the Republicans are doing to Fauci, I understand why many qualified people wouldn’t want to.
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