Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Trump pandemic advisor turned sharp critic who made millions selling his behind-the-scenes stories to the public, has finally received his comeuppance.
Despite receiving a preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden, Dr. Fauci is still in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump. The Republican hasn’t forgiven Fauci for his tell-all memoir, released last year. In it, Fauci alleges that Trump frequently screamed at him in expletive-filled rants during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
The 47th president sat in front of reporters Thursday, one of whom asked him about his recent decision to terminate U.S. Secret Service protection for Fauci. Trump replied that Fauci, who reportedly made $5 million from his memoir, now has the money to pay for his own protection.
“When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off. You can’t have them forever, so I think it’s very standard,” Trump replied.
Going on, he said it was “very fair” to question whether Dr. Fauci still deserved Secret Service protection more than three years after leaving the White House under Biden.
“But you work for government. We took some off other people, too. But you can’t have security detail for the rest of your life because you work for the government,” he explained.
Asked if he would feel responsible if “something were to happen” to Dr. Fauci or John Bolton, who also lost his Secret Service protection on Thursday, Trump replied simply, “No.”
“They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security, too,” he said flatly.
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In the years following his service to Trump, Dr. Fauci didn’t shy away from speaking his mind. In a chapter of his memoir, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” the pandemic expert remarked sarcastically about Trump’s occasional public statements expressing “love” for him, only to scream in his face in private.
“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Dr. Fauci wrote, the New York Times previously reported. “He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’”
“I have a pretty thick skin,” Dr. Fauci added, “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”
Pulling Secret Service protection for some of his political foes comes shortly after Trump selected Sean Curran, his longtime head of security, to take charge at the beleaguered agency.
