Report: Fauci Refusing Interview Invites from Fox News

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly turned down invitations for interviews from the Fox News Channel as the Biden administration struggles to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Thursday report.

Politico’s West Wing Playbook reports:

Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI, the Biden administration’s go-to communicator on Covid-19, has almost entirely stopped appearing on Fox News since July. It’s not for lack of an invitation.

Shows across the cable news channel, including ones with news hosts like BRET BAIER and NEIL CAVUTO, have been trying to book Fauci for months but he’s been turning them down, according to an official familiar with bookings at Fox News.

Fauci made a rare exception for Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace by appearing on his program on October 17th. During the segment, Wallace asked Fauci about becoming a “polarizing figure” over the course of the pandemic, prompting the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to become tense. Wallace asked:

When this pandemic started, it is fair to say you were generally regarded as the authority on infectious disease. As time has gone on, you have become a polarizing figure, and critics accuse you of sending mixed messages. There’s allegations that you helped fund dangerous research at the Wuhan lab. Two questions, why do you think you’ve become so controversial? And honestly, do you think there’s anything you have done that has contributed to that?

“I can’t think of anything, but I’m sure some people will,” replied Fauci. He went on:

I have always stood for making science, data, and evidence be what we guide ourselves by. And I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality, looking them straight in the eye, those are people that don’t particularly care for me. And that’s understandable. Because what I do — and I try very hard — is to be guided by the truth. And sometimes, the truth becomes inconvenient for some people. So they react against me. That just is what it is. There’s not much I can do about that, Chris.

Fauci has received sharp blowback from several high-profile Fox News hosts, including Tucker Carlson, who has called for the White House chief medical adviser to be under criminal investigation over his handling of the pandemic.

“After two years of non-stop media adulation, Tony Fauci has morphed into an even shorter version of Benito Mussolini. Watch Fauci on television the other day refer to himself without even flinching in the third person,” Carlson said of Fauci this week.