Tucker Carlson wanted to make clear on his show Friday night he respects Dr. Anthony Fauci, considers him an “impressive person,” and said he’s clearly an important expert to have in combatting coronavirus — but he criticized Fauci anyway for comments he has publicly made about the public health response.

Fauci’s role on the coronavirus task force has received bipartisan praise, and Fauci himself recently appeared on Carlson’s show to talk about the positive impact of mitigation thus far.

“We’ve interviewed Dr. Fauci respectfully on this program, and we’d gladly do that again if he came back, and he will come back. He’s an impressive person. But that does not mean that he’s never wrong,” Carlson said. “On the question of this pandemic, Fauci has been wrong repeatedly.”

He brought up comments Fauci made in January remarking it’s “not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worrying about,” saying, “Chinese authorities were clearly panicked by what was happening, but Anthony Fauci was not.”

“We’re not attacking Tony Fauci for getting it wrong on coronavirus. Most people did get it wrong, in and out of medicine. It’s never easy predicting which faraway problems will become imminent crises here at home. Even the experts make big mistakes. They’re human beings. They make human mistakes. And that’s exactly the point that we ought to remember going forward,” Carlson said.

He’s particularly bothered by Fauci’s recommendation of a national quarantine, knocking such “extreme measures,” before bringing up the economic impact:

“More than 10 million Americans have already lost their jobs. Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least. Now, we’re not suggesting that Fauci wants to hurt America. We don’t think he does, he seems like a very decent man. But Fauci is not an economist or for that matter someone who fears being unemployed himself. Like most of the people around him. This is not an attack, this is just an observation. Fauci has bulletproof job security. He’s not thinking that way. He has the luxury of looking at the world through the narrow lens of his profession. He doesn’t seem to think much outside that lens.”

He showed a clip of Fauci saying, “I know it’s difficult, but we’re having a lot of suffering, a lot of death. This is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.”

Carlson responded:

“Inconvenient? 10 million Americans out of work and staring at poverty. That is not inconvenient, as you just heard Dr. Fauci put it. It’s horrifying. In fact, it’s a far bigger disaster than the virus itself by any measure. Tony Fauci, decent as he may be, can’t see that because he doesn’t think it’s his job to see it. But even a doctor should be able to think beyond the models. Our response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation. Poor countries are unhealthy countries, always and everywhere. In poor countries, people die of treatable diseases. In poor countries people are far more vulnerable to obscure viruses, like the one we are fighting now. You want to keep Americans from dying before their time? Then don’t impoverish them. For all his credentials, his experience, his apparent personal decency, Dr. Anthony Fauci does not seem to understand any of this and we should never let someone like that run this country.”

You can watch above, via Fox News.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2X8EdeE