Piers Morgan Is Absolutely Fuming Over Dr. Fauci
With Covid-19 once again dominating the news as more is learned about the new Omicron variant discovered in South Africa, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, as well as one of President Joe Biden's chief medical advisors, has also been in the news. The respected doctor who helped develop landmark treatments for HIV (via NPR) has been making the television rounds warning people about Omicron and advising that Americans get their booster shots as soon as possible.
In fact, the CDC changed their recommendations on boosters on November 29, according to Reuters. Before, Americans 18 years and up could get boosters if they wanted and now the CDC says they should, as soon as possible.
Across the pond in England, Piers Morgan, the outspoken British journalist and former "America's Got Talent" judge (via Brittanica) had a few things to say about Dr. Fauci and they aren't very flattering and show his frustration with America's top infectious disease doctor.
Piers Morgan doesn't like Dr. Fauci becoming political
When Dr. Anthony Fauci originally became the face of Covid-19 information during the Donald Trump administration as the pandemic first began, his honesty at what the world was dealing with in terms of how dangerous the virus was often got him sidelined by the president, who tried to paint a rosier picture of things (via USA Today).
After Joe Biden became president, Dr. Fauci became more outspoken, giving interviews almost as soon as Biden was inaugurated. On November 28, Dr. Fauci appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" and seemed to make a few political remarks when interviewer Margaret Brennan asked him about Texas Senator Ted Cruz calling on the doctor to be prosecuted for having contact with China's Wuhan lab. Fauci responded with, "I should be prosecuted?' he chuckled. 'What happened on January 6th, senator?"
This remark looks to have enraged Piers Morgan, who let out his frustrations in a long column for The Daily Mail in which he took aim at what he perceives to be Dr. Fauci's lack of self-awareness, among other things.
Piers Morgan would like to see less of Dr. Fauci on TV
Piers Morgan began his Daily Mail column about Dr. Fauci, writing the following:
"I've never heard Dr Anthony Fauci's cell phone voicemail greeting, but I imagine it says: 'Yes, I'll come on your show.' For someone whose day job is supposed to be leading America's scientific and medical war against Covid-19, he seems to have an incredible amount of spare time for self-promotional media interviews."
In addition to not liking the comment Dr. Fauci made against Ted Cruz on "Face The Nation," Morgan took umbrage with him referring to himself as the representation of science.
"Anybody who's looking at this carefully realizes that there's a distinct anti-science flavor to this,' Dr. Fauci told Margaret Brennan. "If they get up and criticize science, nobody's going to know what they're talking about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci — people could recognize there's a person there, so it's easy to criticize. But they're really criticizing science, because I represent science, and that's dangerous."
Morgan didn't like that comment, calling Dr. Fauci "self-righteous" in his Daily Mail column and writing, "He sounds more like a religious leader berating non-believers than a scientist trying to grapple with a pandemic that has seen more scientific flip-flopping than any global medical crisis in my lifetime."