GOP senator who published book during the pandemic hits out at Dr Fauci for writing book during the pandemic
Marsha Blackburn slammed Dr Anthony Fauci for producing a book during the pandemic, despite having recently published one herself.
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Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn blasted Dr Anthony Fauci for writing a book during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite having her own book published last year.
Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward by Dr Fauci was expected to be released on 2 November of this year. But the book vanished from the sites of online retailers following the release of some of Dr Fauci’s emails from last year.
“While Americans suffered, Fauci wrote a book,” Ms Blackburn tweeted on Monday evening.
But the senator’s own book, entitled The Mind of a Conservative Woman: Seeking the Best for Family and Country, was published in September 2020 when the pandemic was still raging.
A number of Republicans have been going after Dr Fauci recently, with Florida Senator Marco Rubio urging President Joe Biden to fire him.
“Dr Anthony Fauci has repeatedly demonstrated a history of moving goal-posts when it comes to public health, withholding facts that don’t conform with his own narrative, and issuing inappropriate personal judgments that distort the truth. 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,” Mr Rubio said in a Fox News opinion piece on 5 June.
Former President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Dr Fauci was “in the pocket of China”.
Speaking to Fox Business, he said: “I always got along with him [Dr Fauci] great, but he was wrong on so many fronts.”
“If you look at his emails, they’re really horrible. He was in the pocket, it would see... of China, the way he pandered to them and the way he dealt with them,” he added.
National Geographic was listed as the publisher of Dr Fauci’s 80-page book about his “life philosophy”. A spokesperson for the publisher told Newsweek that the book was removed from websites because it opened up for pre-order too early.
The Amazon page for the book originally said it would give readers “an intimate view of one of the world’s greatest medical minds” and “universal advice to live by”. It would also provide a “unique perspective” on leadership and how to handle hard times.
Republican Arizona Rep Andy Biggs tweeted on 1 June: “Profiting from the pandemic with a book deal is truly a new low.”
But the National Geographic spokesperson told Newsweek that Dr Fauci was not going to be paid for the book, which was planned to be released at the same time as a documentary. The publisher added that Dr Fauci would not be paid for the documentary either. They also said that the chief medical adviser to the president used material from interviews and speeches to create the book.
BuzzFeed News published a tranche of emails that included thousands of pages of messages to and from Dr Fauci during the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In one email, Dr Fauci writes that masks bought at drug stores were “not really effective”.
In a 5 February 2020 email, he said: “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.
“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material,” he said. “It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”
The CDC updated its guidance in April 2020, in which they recommended that people wear masks to stem the spread of the virus.
Ms Blackburn continued her attacks on Dr Fauci on Tuesday morning, tweeting that he “protected China when he misled Americans on the origins of COVID-19 for 14 months. It’s time for him to go”.
She also tweeted out a video in which she spoke about what she claimed was “the facts on Fauci that big tech doesn’t want you to know”.
Dr Fauci said he was concerned about the attacks on him because “it’s really very much an attack on science”.
Speaking to MSNBC, he said: “My job was to make a vaccine and use my institute and the talented scientists we have there and that we fund in the various universities to get a vaccine that was highly safe and highly effective and we succeeded,” he said. “That’s what I do. All the other stuff is just a terrible, not-happy type of a distraction, but it’s all nonsense.”
A spokesperson for Ms Blackburn declined to comment on the record.
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