After emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials regarding the COVID-19 virus were released, there was widespread condemnation from a number of GOP members. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) launched criticism at the Chief Medical Advisor to the president by proclaiming that “in Florida, we chose freedom over Fauci-ism, and we’re much better off for doing that.” President Joe Biden (D) was subsequently asked if he maintained confidence in Fauci after the release of the emails, and President Biden doubled down that he is “very confident” in the Fauci’s counsel. In response to the debacle, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) has written an op-ed discussing Fauci, the emails and Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Florida lawmaker is urging President Biden to “fire Dr. Fauci.”
On Tuesday, 3,200 emails belonging to Dr. Fauci from January to June 2020 were obtained through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests by Buzzfeed and the Washington Post. They indicated that Fauci was privately warned of the possibility that the COVID-19 virus was released from a lab, and virus researcher Kristian Andersen shared that “some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”
At a time when the public discussion has further explored the genesis of the COVID-19 virus, Senator Rubio is casting doubt on Dr. Fauci, writing that “it doesn’t take an overactive imagination to grasp human infallibility, or to wonder why a coronavirus pandemic might first break out in exactly the same city that hosted a laboratory specifically studying this class of viruses.”
“Some scientists were cautious to remain open to a range of possibilities, but others, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dismissed the idea that the virus could have come from a lab,” Rubio added. However, he was not surprised, expressing that “it was a massive failure in judgment for a prominent public health official – though in retrospect unsurprising, given his history of holding back the truth based on personal judgments about when he thinks the American people are ‘ready’ to hear the facts.”
In turn, Rubio feels that Fauci is no longer fit to serve the position he holds, commenting that “During the campaign, Biden said, ‘I’ll choose science over fiction.’ Now is his chance to make good on that promise and fire Dr. Fauci.”
At the end of May, Biden released a statement regarding investigations into the beginning of COVID-19, informing that he has “asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days.”
