On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced his plan to retire in December of this year. Fox News Tucker Carlson weighed in with his opinion of Fauci's retirement announcement -- but his attack appears to have backfired on social media.
During his Monday evening broadcast of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," the right-wing talk show host wasted no time sharing his reaction. “Imagine the pandemonium at SoulCycle studios across the Northeast this morning when Tony Fauci announced his retirement,” Carlson began.
“Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it. Picture the chaos, if you can, in the organic chaga aisle at Whole Foods in Brookline. Try to envision the panic and hysteria that must have broken out at espresso bars in Edgartown and Aspen and Santa Monica and Bethesda as thousands of masked ladies in Lululemon discovered, all at once, that the one religious leader they still revered, their own even tinier version of the Dalai Lama, had decided to retreat forever from public life.”
He wasn’t done. “You can picture the carnage, the wailing, the swooning, manicured hands clutched to breasts, then fumbling for Xanax and expensive handbags,” Carlson continued. “Not since the orange man seized the White House in a Russian coup have more 46-year-old Cornell-educated lawyers with weak husbands wept shamelessly in public. There’s not enough rose in Napa to quell that pain.”
It didn't take long for Twitter users to fire back with opposing views as they highlighted Carlson's own privileged background.
"Tucker pretending he’s Joe Sixpack and not the very preppy, manicured trust fund baby he’s ALWAYS been somehow works on the trailer trash who lap this shit up," one Twitter user tweeted.
“The guy whose family got rich selling us salt and carb loaded frozen 'dinners' is talking about elites like he isn't one," remarked another.
A third chimed in, “Anthony Fauci spent his adult life trying to help people and when he retired Tucker Carlson, the despicable caricature of a spoiled prep school twerp, called him a liar, a fraud and insinuated that he helped the Chinese spread Covid. Appalling, dangerous slander. Call him out!”
Fauci announced Monday he will leave the federal government in December. Fauci is the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and leads a lab studying the immune system. Many Americans weren't introduced to Dr. Fauci until the COVID-19 pandemic when he became a household name for his public appearances in which he attempted to inform the American public on how to protect themselves against the virus.
Fauci, however, has a long history, having served under a total of seven presidents during his tenure on numerous outbreaks including HIV/AIDS, SARS, pandemic flu, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks.
As the COVID-19 pandemic deepened, Fauci fell out of favor with former president Donald Trump due to his urgings of continued public caution that clashed with the former president’s desire to return to normalcy and promotion of unproven treatments for the virus. He was eventually given a security detail for his protection due to the political attacks and death threats he received.
Despite the threats Dr. Fauci received in recent years for simply doing his job, he remained loyal to presenting the science to the American public. In an interview with The Associated Press Monday, Fauci stated, “I’ve gone into this campus and into the labs and into the hospital every day, including most weekends, for 54 years. The idea of walking away from it obviously is bittersweet.”
