Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized former President Donald Trump this week for claiming during an interview that he could not fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying that even if that were true, there was no reason why Trump had to put Fauci in charge of managing the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic.
“He should not be so proud of keeping Fauci around,” Paul told Fox News host Jesse Watters. “Fauci was a menace to the truth. Talk about a fount of misinformation, it’s Anthony Fauci. More misinformation came out of the government than any other source. So he should have fired him.”
When asked if he thought Fauci was going to play a big role in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Paul said, “It may because Fauci did stick around.”
“There may be civil service rules about actually firing him, but there’s no reason he had to head up the pandemic committee, the COVID Committee,” Paul said. “So he was on the committee. In fact, if not the lead, he was the committee with the vice president. They met all of the time.”
