Dr. Anthony Fauci was lavishly praised by the hosts of ABC’s ‘The View’ Thursday while he makes the rounds promoting his new book.
Host Whoopi Goldberg gushed over Fauci, the former White House chief medical adviser, calling him ‘one of the classiest’ people in Washington, D.C.
‘Thank you for coming on the show and everything, everything you’ve done from the very beginning,’ Goldberg said to a glowing and smiling Fauci, who was cheered by the audience. ‘It’s extraordinary and you’re no worse for the wear, you look good.’
Goldberg continued: ‘You are probably one of the classiest people I’ve ever watched move around in Washington, D.C.’
‘I just want to raise my dreads to you,’ Goldberg said holding up her hair in salute.
The fawning over Fauci comes as the former health official has faced criticism over his handling of the COVID pandemic. He recently admitted that there was no clear science behind six-feet social distancing and masking of children, sparking outrage.
Fauci released a book this week called ‘On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service’ which details his five decades as a government health official.
In it he touches on his navigating of the AIDS pandemic and later COVID. It also reveals fiery f-bomb filled conversations with former President Donald Trump and the death threats he has faced as a result of his work.
Earlier this month, Fauci testified before a House committee investigating COVID’s origins that he, despite throwing cold water on the theory in the past, is ‘open minded’ about the possibility the virus started in a Wuhan lab.
Republicans later said he lied to the committee about his openness to the lab leak hypothesis, saying he could face charges for lying.
‘If trying to save people’s lives is a crime, then I’m guilty,’ he told the enamored View hosts when asked about Republicans who say he could be criminally charged.
‘What are the charges?’ he said. ‘That you saved millions of lives with the vaccine that you helped develop or that you got people to do things that were interventions that made them more safe against a deadly pandemic that killed 1.2 million people?’
‘I quite frankly don’t know what they are talking about,’ Fauci said.
After his hearing in early June, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer accused the doctor of lying about his role in establishing COVID masking and distancing rules.
‘Everyone knows that Doctor Fauci was the lead instigator in the spacing distance,’ Comer charged.
He also said he ‘likes the idea’ that Fauci could face criminal charges over his conduct during COVID and for lying to Congress.
‘I don’t know that I said he should be arrested, but I like the idea,’ Comer told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney earlier this month. ‘At the end of the day, if you lie to Congress, that’s a felony.’
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, later requested Fauci sit for a transcribed interview to grill him on his claim that he supported the lab leak theory.
Jordan alleges that Fauci’s remarks are absolutely ‘false.’
The Ohio Republican charges that ‘is false on its face’ because of the ‘pressure’ Fauci and the Biden administration put on social media firms to choke out lab-leak posts, leading to their censoring online communication on COVID.
Jordan further alleges that Fauci ‘sidelined’ former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield in a bid to silence his view that COVID ‘came from a Wuhan lab.’
Those specific allegations never came up during Fauci’s Thursday TV appearance.