Dr. Anthony Fauci said comments like those from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., during Monday's tense line of questioning on Capitol Hill are encouraging deaths threats.
Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, on Monday testified before the House Oversight Committee on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Greene refused to address him as doctor, saying, "This man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be removed, and he belongs in prison."
Fauci told CNN on Monday that he hoped the hearings would be about looking forward, not looking back.
"The purpose of hearings is to try and figure out how we can do better so next time, if and when we are faced with a pandemic, we'd be better prepared and can benefit," Fauci told CNN. "If mistakes were made, we can identify them, and we try to correct them for the future. That's not what we saw today."
Fauci, who retired from his government post in 2022, admitted during the testimony that many of his most cherished and controversial beliefs, such as the efficacy of masking school children, were made up.
"Whenever somebody gets up, whether it's news media — Fox News does it a lot — or it's somebody in the Congress who gets up and makes a public statement that I'm responsible for the deaths of X number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus, immediately — it's like clockwork — the death threats go way up,' Fauci told CNN.
Greene was unmoved by Fauci's claims of deaths threats, saying that she, too, is often the recipient.
"No one should get death threats and I get them ALL THE TIME," Greene wrote on X. "But lucky for Mr Fauci, he has Secret Service Protection at the taxpayers expense. I DO NOT, and have to pay for my own security and am a gun owner.
"It's not my comments that have people furious at Mr. Fauci, it's the FACT that his ridiculous, non-scientific, tyrannical policies DESTROYED people's lives and he's a narcissistic a**hole and liar which is why SO MANY people hate him."
Fauci said to CNN: "When you have performances like that unusual performance by Marjorie Taylor Greene in today's hearing, those are the kind of things that drive up the death threats because there is a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense."