OPINION:
Dr. Anthony Fauci may have retired from his $480,654 salaried role as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But he’s still drawing big benefits, thanks be the U.S. taxpayers. Not only did he earn more in base salary while NIAID director than the president of the United States, but he’s currently being carted around courtesy of the U.S. Marshals.
Yes, Fauci, retired from public office though he may be, nonetheless is tapping into taxpayer pockets with a full-fledged federal security detail of officers who take him from one media appearance to the next — from one book tour event to another.
And interesting to note: It’s at these media and book events that Fauci drills down deeper about the threats he’s received and that his family has received. Talk about the power of the hype. Fauci points to his security detail as necessary to keep away those who would kill him, while meanwhile promoting his book and pulling at the heartstrings of those who might buy.
Sen. Rand Paul is disgusted by the ex-COVID czar’s post-office behavior. And rightly so.
“Dr. Fauci can afford his own security detail,” Paul said in The Daily Mail. “Taxpayers paid for his mishandling of COVID-19. They shouldn’t continue to pay.”
Remember when Paul and his wife were physically assaulted after leaving Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020? He tweeted then: “Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House. Thank you to @DCPoliceDept for literally saving our lives from a crazed mob.”
He didn’t have a caravan of taxpayer-funded security officials on scene to protect and pluck him from the chaos. His wife wasn’t spared the wrath of the lunatic left. And that was while Paul was on active public service, that is to say, not retired from office.
It’s amazing how leftists can justify the use of tax dollars for personal benefit.
Fauci knows — as all Democrats know — that it’s not Republicans who run amok in the streets, looking for political enemies to attack. Ask Steve Scalise, shot on a baseball field by a crazed Democrat looking to shoot Republicans. It’s leftist loons urged on by angry Democrat politicians, or silent-but-complicity Democrat politicians, who commit the majority of politically tied violence in America’s streets. It’s the Democrats themselves who call for that — who call for summers of resistance; for the unleashing of whirlwinds; for the storming of MAGAs at their places of work, dining and dwelling; for the screaming protests right outside conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes.
Republicans don’t support activism by Molotov cocktail. Conservatives don’t cheer when bricks are thrown into storefront windows to protest for abortion and against capitalism. MAGA types don’t go on personal hunts of political opponents to drive them out of restaurants and off social media. Republicans and conservatives and MAGA types don’t stand in the middle of rush-hour roads and bring traffic to a halt as they scream about climate change, or take up arms and take over city streets and declare them CHAZ areas as they scream about racist police, or send out their half-dressed, mostly undressed psychologically deranged to parade in front of little girls and boys and shake their butts for the whole world to see as they demand equality and equity and extra rights for LGBTQs.
Those are all designs of the Democrats.
Those are all ways and tactics and radical acts of the far left.
Conservatives try to persuade and convince and legislate based on principle and pride in nation and proper moral compasses and so forth. Democrats try to draw blood — literally — and beat their opponents to a pulp.
That Fauci is scared about attacks from his detractors is absurd theatrics — unless and until his detractors hail from the Democrat camp, that is. That Fauci gets special taxpayer-funded security for his fabricated fears for his safety, all coincidentally as he’s pitching a book, is yet one more slap to the face of Americans fed up with this little man.
As Paul said: “The only other person probably getting his level of security would be the president, vice president, maybe Cabinet members and a few members in leadership in the House and Senate.”
Fauci isn’t the only bureaucrat to suffer Americans’ scorn and derision. Are taxpayers to now pay for full-time, post-public service security for all those who sparked the ire of the citizenry? Tax-paid security for Fauci is a terrible precedent because it sets the stage for citizens to supply the same for any bureaucrat leaving office who feels a bit unsafe — and if that’s the standard, well then, that means hard-working Americans will soon enough be on the hook to pay for private security details for each and every politician, for all politicians, for each and every and all politicians, ’til death do they part.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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