Tucker Carlson’s attempt to cast himself as a voice of the people against elites fizzled Monday during his takedown of the retiring Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Watch the video below.)
Fauci, whose public health advice guided the country through the coronavirus pandemic, announced that he will be stepping down in December as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases and chief medical adviser to the president.
“Imagine the pandemonium at SoulCycle studios across the Northeast this morning when Tony Fauci announced his retirement,” began Carlson, the Fox News star who amplified far-right attacks on Fauci throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
“Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it. Picture the chaos, if you can, in the organic chaga aisle at Whole Foods in Brookline. Try to envision the panic and hysteria that must have broken out at espresso bars in Edgartown and Aspen and Santa Monica and Bethesda as thousands of masked ladies in Lululemon discovered, all at once, that the one religious leader they still revered, their own even tinier version of the Dalai Lama, had decided to retreat forever from public life.”
He wasn’t done: “You can picture the carnage, the wailing, the swooning, manicured hands clutched to breasts, then fumbling for Xanax and expensive handbags,” Carlson continued. “Not since the orange man seized the White House in a Russian coup have more 46-year-old Cornell-educated lawyers with weak husbands wept shamelessly in public. There’s not enough rose’ in Napa to quell that pain.”
