Elon Musk violently attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing White House adviser on the Covid-19 pandemic, on Sunday in a tweet that immediately sparked controversy.
“My pronouns are Sue/Fauci,” the wealthy Twitter boss wrote, alluding to the right-wing campaign to sue Dr. Fauci for alleged crimes related to his involvement in the pandemic response.
That also posted a meme showing Dr. Fauci telling US President Joe Biden: “Just another lockdown, my king (…)”, in an apparent criticism of this measure adopted in the past to fight Covid.
This tweet quickly went viral, receiving over 800,000 likes in around 11 hours, but also drawing criticism.
“Could you leave this man alone?”
Vaccine specialist and author Peter Hotez called on Elon Musk to remove the tweet. “200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives to covid, to this kind of anti-scientific rhetoric and misinformation,” he said.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar praised the way Dr. Fauci “calmly guided our country through the crisis” and blamed Elon Musk. “Would you please leave this man alone, in your seemingly endless search for attention?”
Republican lawmakers have threatened to go after Anthony Fauci when they take control of the House of Representatives in January, following several disputes with him over Covid vaccines, mandatory mask wearing and other pandemic-related measures.
fauci on the way out
In 2020, during White House press conferences, Anthony Fauci politely corrected President Trump multiple times.
The 81-year-old immunologist will step down as presidential adviser on the pandemic this month. He will also step down before the end of the year as director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which he held for 38 years.
In November, he said that the worst difficulty he had faced in the fight against Covid was the political polarization of the country.
Source: BFM TV
