Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci steamrolled Donald Trump at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has only avoided prison time because of Joe Biden’s election in 2020, according to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, 70, has been a staunch opponent of the government’s response to the outbreak and is a vocal skeptic of the COVID vaccine.
In a podcast interview with Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck released Saturday, Kennedy heaped vitriol on the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Well, he’s not in jail because — because Joe Biden is president and because, you know, unfortunately Donald Trump colluded with, or was run over by him,” said the son of the late attorney general and senator from New York Robert F. Kennedy.
“Donald Trump knew what was wrong. He knew not to shut down our businesses. And he knew about lockdowns, about ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and he tried to speak up but his own bureaucrats told him to shut up and unfortunately he did what he was told,” Kennedy added, arguing that Trump “doesn’t deserve another chance” in office because of it.
Fauci, now 83, was a prominent member of Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force and was promoted to Biden’s chief medical adviser in the Democrat’s COVID-19 Response Team before retiring at the end of 2022.
The immunologist was a strong advocate for social distancing and gave intentionally contradictory advice on mask-wearing early in the pandemic, first advising the public not to cover their faces before changing course and claiming he had meant to head off a shortage of protective equipment.
Trump has defended not firing Fauci, arguing both that he didn’t have the ability to dismiss the doc, and claiming that Fauci wasn’t a “big player” in his administration — despite him fronting daily briefings on the pandemic for months in the spring and summer of 2020.
“First of all, you’re not allowed. He’s civil service, and you’re not allowed to fire him,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in 2023.
“But forget that, because I don’t necessarily go by everything. But Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them, in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player in my administration.”
Not firing Fauci was a big talking point during the 2024 Republican primary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who hit the 45th president for letting the doctor have a large platform for his controversial recommendations.
Kennedy also criticized the strict social pressure around what doctors were allowed to say about the vaccine and the response to COVID-19 during the pandemic.
“Thousands of doctors who were trying to tell the truth were punished, they were delicensed, they were gaslighted, they were vilified and demonized and silenced, and it was really criminal,” he told Beck.
The independent cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changing the benchmarks for childhood development, which he argued happened after COVID lockdowns forced children to stay indoors and wear masks.
“They’re trying to normalize what they did to our children and the whole thing is so criminal and so corrupt,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. is the top-polling third-party candidate in the 2024 race, averaging 8.8% support, according to RealClearPolitics.
