Tuesday’s CBS Mornings marked the latest stop on Dr. Tony Fauci’s book tour for his memoir and, considering co-host/Democratic donor Gayle King and co-host/former NFL player Nate Burleson were at the table, it largely consisted of one gross softball after another sucking up to this former leftist icon about how tough it must be to be him, how some don’t understand science, and how America would be in trouble if Trump were to be elected.
Despite their hobnobbing, co-host Tony Dokoupil actually pressed Fauci on two issues Americans are most likely to care about when looking back at the coronavirus pandemic: the toll of school closures and the virus’s origins.
King’s opening was a nauseous setting of the table, boasting of “his pivotal role in fighting the Covid pandemic, and pivotal is the word here” and his biography of diseases faced while at NIH and having worked under seven persidents.
Her first question was about the Pfizer vaccine and how he allegedly broke down upon being told by the company’s CEO about the possibility of a vaccine for COVID-19. In other words, nothing about concerns Americans have had about them, even their effectiveness.
Later, King bemoaned Fauci still requiring personal security and being viewed by some as “a lightning rod” despite having been “a public service officer who’s done — who basically really has saved millions of lives” and “what you always say...is that you were guided by science always and telling the truth”.
Burleson, King, and Fauci also took turns ripping former President Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency and peddled the long-debunked lie about Trump said COVID-19 was a hoax (click “expand”):
BURLESON: And you’ve spoke about your relationship, and write about your complicated relationship with former President Donald Trump. He could possibly be our president again. Given that you know him, personally, from a public health perspective, do you believe he is fit to lead us if he is elected president?
FAUCI: You know, I don’t want to get into what’s fit or not, that — I want to stay in —
BURLESON: From public health — health perspective, though.
FAUCI: — from a health standpoint, he missed opportunities to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to tell people to do things that would keep them safe. That’s what bothers me as a public health person, as a physician, who my only care and goal is the safety and the protection of the American public and their health. And, for example, he could have said when the masks came out, and the CDC said wear a mask, instead of saying I don’t want to wear a mask —
BURLESON: Right.
FAUCI: — he could have said masks saves lives —
KING: Yeah.
FAUCI: — oh, wear a mask, and then, all the people who follow him religiously —
BURLESON: Mmm.
FAUCI: — would have been wearing masks.
KING: They would have believed him.
FAUCI: And it would have been the same thing.
BURLESON: They hang on every word.
KING: Early on, you called him to say, look, Mr. President, this is serious, this is — you have to be honest with the people and let them know how serious it is, and the very next day, Dr. Fauci, he’s on — he’s — he’s saying the whole thing is a hoax.
FAUCI: Yeah.
KING: What did you think —
FAUCI: Yeah.
KING: — when you saw him say that, after you had a very extensive conversation?
BURLESON: Intimate meeting with him.
KING: Yeah.
FAUCI: I was flabbergasted. It was like whiplash cause when I was speaking to him, you know, one-on-one —
KING: Yeah.
FAUCI: — saying Mr. President, you’ve got to be honest with people. It will come back to bite you if you don’t. We have a real problem. And I actually was convinced that he — he agreed with me. And then I went home and put the television on and he said it was a hoax.
But, when asked by Burleson about Biden, Fauci said he’s “absolutely” fit to remain president given how he made Fauci “his chief medical adviser” and told him “the first day...we want to go with the evidence and the truth”.
Minutes later as the interview ended, King repeatedly thanked him “for saving lives”.
In contrast, Dokoupil’s questions were not only challenging (especially for a liberal broadcast network interview), but drew out the side of Fauci we’ve come to expect when he’s not having his feet rhetorically rubbed: disgusted and testy.
Here was his question on schools:
As we get further from Covid, I think a lot of people, though, are asking themselves, what did we learn and what will we do better the next time? And one clear area seems to be the school closures which did enormous harm to kids on multiple levels and — and didn’t seem to save lives. And I wonder, can we say today that is a mistake, the closures?
A grouchy Fauci whined “no”, adding “what was not a mistake is the actual closure because when we had to shut down that 15 day to flatten the curve, we were in a tsunami of cases” with “freezer trucks” for bodies at places like Elmhurst.
Dokoupil stood his ground: “Oh, I remember the hospital outside my house. I’m not talking about the initial — I’m not talking about the initial — I’m talking about the depth and the prolonged.”
Fauci continued to say “no” and insisted he would “get to that.” Only a few moments later and proclaiming he always supported reopening schools did he concede year-long-plus closures were bad.
Dokoupil’s other contrarian moment actually came when King tried to suck up to Fauci by lamenting “people blame you for Covid” and “[t]here’s some conspiracy that, you know, you’re working behind the scenes, that there was a lab in China that you’re responsible for.”
After Fauci said “the viruses funded by the NIH were so distant from the origin standpoint” pf COVID-19 it couldn’t have come from a lab, Dokoupil invoked Harvard and MIT biologist Alina Chan’s New York Times column arguing for the lab leak. Once again, Fauci scoffed (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: I mean, there’s a researcher named Alina Chan who’s affiliated with MIT and Harvard —
FAUCI: Yeah.
DOKOUPIL: — who’s a little fuzzier on the — on the covid —
FAUCI: But she’s a pretty fuzzy person, quite frankly.
DOKOUPIL: — okay.
FAUCI: — when it comes to that, so —
DOKOUPIL: Alright, well, The New York Times published her op-ed. She thinks —
FAUCI: I’m surprised that The Times wrote that, yeah.
DOKOUPIL: — so you don’t agree the most likely scenario is the lab leak theory?
FAUCI: No. I think that, for anybody to say it’s most likely, we have to keep an open mind.
DOKOUPIL: Okay.
BURLESON: Yeah.
FAUCI: If you look at the virologists, the overwhelming —
BURLESON: Yeah.
FAUCI: — number of virologists in the country, they feel that the evidence, though not convincing —
BURLESON: Yeah.
FAUCI: — is more suggestive of it being a natural origin, though not — not a slam dunk.
To see the relevant transcript from June 18, click here.
