Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis mocked Dr. Fauci as ‘little elf’ and said that someone needs to “chuck him across the Potomac.” “I’m just sick of seeing him. I know he says he’s going to retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac,” said the Florida Republican Governor. The comments by DeSantis were made during a Florida GOP “Keep Florida Free” event in Seminole County.
Dr. Fauci will be stepping down in December as he announced. At the moment, he is President Biden’s chief medical adviser as well as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Fox News. He has worked for over 50 years in the American public health sector, advising every president since Reagan. During the pandemic, Dr. Fauci was a leading figure on both Trump and Biden’s coronavirus response teams.
Famously, he sparred with Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in committee hearings over the origins of the pandemic and whether his department within the National Institute of Health funded gain-of-function research. In 1984, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, Dr. Fauci became the director of the NIAID. The majority of his research over the past four decades has sought to diagnose, treat, and prevent HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, Ebola, malaria, and other infectious diseases. Dr. Fauci advised President George W. Bush to sign the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), funding $90 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and research worldwide. In 2002, Bush awarded Dr. Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2021, Dr. Fauci announced he believed the country should seriously consider enforcing a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel, a policy the Biden administration had previously rejected at the time of Dr. Fauci’s comments. Dr. Fauci said: “I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden.”
“I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” he added. In the statement, Dr. Fauci also stressed that he is still not “retiring” but rather “moving on from my current positions.” “I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats,” said Dr. Fauci.
Also, worth noting is that Dr. Fauci is currently one of the highest-paid members of the federal workforce, something he has faced criticism for as well.