‘What a moron’: Dr. Fauci loses his temper with a GOP senator during a heated exchange

Dr. Anthony Fauci has a long history of serving in Republican presidential administrations, including those of President Ronald Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, countless MAGA Republicans have gone out of their way to politicize the 80-year-old immunologist, now President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser in the White House.

The tension between Fauci and Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas was impossible to miss during an angry exchange at a pandemic-related hearing this week.

Marshall, a Republican, was obviously trying to score brownie points with the MAGA crowd when he grilled Fauci about his finances. Fauci is reportedly the most highly paid employee of the United States’ federal government, which makes sense because he has been a federal employee for well over half a century. Fauci was hired by the National Institutes of Health in the late 1960s and became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984 under Reagan. He has held that position for 38 years.

According to Forbes, Fauci earned $417,608 in 2019. Marshall, during the hearing, implied that there was something nefarious about Fauci’s finances and said he couldn’t find Fauci’s 2020 disclosure form — and Fauci, who usually comes across as even-tempered, lost his temper with Marshall and snapped, “All you have to do is ask for it. You are so misinformed, it's extraordinary.”

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Journalist Liz Essley Whyte tweeted:

After his conversation with Marshall, Fauci could be heard saying, “What a moron. Jesus Christ.”