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Fauci Announces He's Stepping Down, Speculation About the Timing Erupts

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Roughly a month after he first announced that he would leave the federal government, Dr. Anthony Fauci made it official Monday.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as well as the chief medical advisor to the president, announced his intentions in a statement posted Monday on the NIAID website.

“I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in the statement.

“I am very proud of our many accomplishments,” Fauci, whose leadership of the efforts to fight COVID-19 has come under intense criticism, said in the statement.

Fauci, 81, said he will remain active.

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“While I am moving on from my current positions, I am not retiring. After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field. I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats,” he said.

In July, Fauci broached the subject of leaving the federal government in an interview with Politico.

“I don’t think there is anything else that I, Tony Fauci, can do except leave behind an institution where I have picked the best people in the country, if not the world, who will continue my vision,” he said.

“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have Covid anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” he said then.

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In that interview, Fauci said if he stayed, he expected a contentious year if Republicans, with whom he has sparred, gain a majority in either house of Congress.

“They’re going to try and come after me, anyway. I mean, probably less so if I’m not in the job,” he said. “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”

But on Monday, many commented that Fauci was doing exactly that.

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A few days after the interview saying he would leave, Fauci added a definite maybe to his plans, according to The Hill.

“What happens between now and then I have not decided, but the one thing I do know is that I have other things that I want to do in a professional way that I want to have the capability — while I still have the energy and the passion to do them,” Fauci said.

In an interview this month with Dr. Larry Corey, president and former director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute in Seattle, Fauci described himself as the personification of science.

“What I symbolize in an era of the normalization of untruths and lies and all the things you’re seeing going on in society from Jan. 6 to everything else that goes on, people are craving for consistency, for integrity, for truth, and for people caring about people,” Fauci said.

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Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack can be reached at jackwritings1@gmail.com.
Location
New York City
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Politics, Foreign Policy, Military & Defense Issues




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