Hot mic catches Fauci calling GOP senator ‘moron’ after tense exchange over financial disclosures

Dr. Anthony Fauci was caught on a hot mic insulting a Republican senator after a heated debate in a hearing Tuesday.

President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser could be heard calling Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall a “moron” after the Republican asked Fauci about whether he would be willing to disclose his financial information, a question that comes after it was reported in recent weeks that the doctor will be making at least $350,000 per year after he retires from his job as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — a government pension that would be the largest in U.S. history.

“My financial disclosures are public knowledge and have been so,” Fauci told Marshall. “You are getting amazingly wrong information,” he added after the senator cast doubt on whether Fauci has been fully transparent about his current and past investments.

Marshall noted that his office could not find the documents, after which Fauci stressed that his financial disclosure information is accessible to the public. The line of questioning then came to an end, but Fauci’s frustration boiled over, even as the next senator was called upon, in what was caught on the microphone.

“What a moron,” Fauci said. “Jesus Christ.”

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Hours after the heated exchange went viral, Marshall responded with a press release that insisted “contrary to what Dr. Fauci said,” his “financial disclosures for the years of the COVID pandemic are not public.”

The senator added, “I understand that Anthony Fauci had a very frustrating day: having a bombshell report show he in fact did award U.S. tax dollars for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and being called out about his personal financial disclosure during the COVID pandemic NOT being publically available must be very frustrating.”

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Marshall said Fauci calling him “a moron during a Senate hearing may have alleviated the stress,” but it didn’t help to “take away from the facts.”

Fauci was asked to respond to the hot mic moment during an appearance on MSNBC with host Chris Hayes.

“He was implying, if you listen to the entire dialogue, that in my position, responsible for drug trials and having so-called inside knowledge of what drug works and what drug doesn’t work, that maybe I was making investments sort of … ahead of the game here. He was totally implying that,” Fauci said. “And he made the statement … ‘We can’t get your financial statement.’ It was stunning to me that a United States senator doesn’t realize that my financial statement is public knowledge. It was just, like, where have you been?”