Aaron Rodgers took aim at Anthony Fauci during a fiery appearance on Pat McAfee’s ESPN program Monday, branding the former top U.S. infectious disease official a “coward” and a “criminal.”
Rodgers, who has been one of the NFL’s most prominent vaccine skeptics and a frequent critic of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, unloaded on Fauci after the ex-White House medical adviser repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a contentious Senate hearing.
The moment appeared to build from the start. As Rodgers joined the set, he seemed to ask how much time remained on ESPN’s broadcast. McAfee told him the show had “a hard out” in just eight minutes.
Rodgers quickly steered a football question into a broadside, saying, “I’m going to plead the fifth… like that absolute coward Tony Fauci.”
What followed was a roughly 13-minute monologue, with McAfee and his four co-hosts offering little interruption while broadcasting live from Pittsburgh Steelers training camp.
“Absolute coward,” Rodgers said of Fauci. “Are you kidding me? You got a pardon and you pleaded over 100 times? What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were the science?”
Aaron Rodgers sharply criticized Anthony Fauci and the handling of Covid-19 during an appearance on ESPN.
Rodgers then accused the media of giving Fauci less scrutiny than it gave his own vaccination status. “You get up there and you can’t answer a question?” he said. “And how much time did the network spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week? On my vaccination status? On Taylor and Travis’ wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? No, I bet they didn’t.”
‘Go back to the coward Tony Fauci, who’s spending the entire time writing in his diary about how fun it is to be famous? What are you going to say about me now? What are you going to say about me now?
No, seriously, now that you can’t talk about the Covid stuff, because obviously that was made in a lab in China… that’s not even questionable any more. Tony Fauci is an absolute criminal, I’m on good terms with my family, what are you going to say now?
‘I thought you had a pardon there, Tony. Why couldn’t you answer one question? We got four more minutes, let’s keep this s*** going.’
Rodgers’ furious tirade comes after he was widely criticized in the media and by fans throughout the Covid pandemic due to his skepticism over the vaccine rollout.
He told reporters he was ‘immunized’, leading to question marks over whether he had received the jabs, and he openly criticized the NFL’s protocol to deal with the virus.
Last week, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a volatile hearing on COVID-19.
Fauci pleaded the fifth over 100 times during his appearance in front of the committee
Rodgers was a polarizing figure during the Covid pandemic – loved and hated by NFL fans
Fauci refused to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself more than 100 times.
He had been called in front of the committee to be questioned on the origins of Covid, including whether a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was more likely than previously acknowledged.
Rodgers, in his appearance on ESPN, claimed that was ‘obviously’ the origin, though the truth is far more unclear and investigations are still ongoing.
‘I’ve got to give flowers to Stephen A. Smith, my old friend Stephen A,’ Rodgers continued on McAfee’s show. ‘Because he was man enough to actually admit and apologize to Kyrie Irving. So I gotta give a shoutout to my guy Stephen A, you are not a coward. I appreciate you.
‘Other than that, there’s been a lot of silence… 19 seconds on one subject, oh no don’t talk about that. We can talk about Rex Ryan’s foot fetish, but please don’t talk about anything else right now, any scandals. Talk about Taylor and Travis’ wedding, yeah what do insiders know about that?
‘I was endangering my teammates? Now look what happened. They suppressed early treatments, they lied about where it came from. Tony Fauci is writing in his journal, “I don’t want to create any vaccine hesitancy if I tell them what the actual stats are.”
At points, McAfee covered his eyes as Rodgers got everything off his chest live on ESPN
‘Tony Fauci pushing his medicine, just like he did back in the 80s, and now he has an autopen pardon and you can’t answer one question? Not even your name?
‘I told you I’d be on the right side of history.’
At times during the blistering rant, McAfee covered his eyes as the live audience laughed and co-hosts looked on stunned at what they were hearing.
Rodgers, it seems, had been waiting a while for a chance to air his grievances to a national audience.
‘”I Am Science” said six foot of distancing, that’ll be a good thing,’ the Steelers quarterback continued. ‘”If we can scare them enough, they’ll probably take this vaccine that’s had zero trials done for it, we have no idea what the consequences are, there’s no informed consent, you can’t even look at the insert to know what you’re doing, they’re not even pulling the plunger back to make sure they’ve got the right spot in the arm. The insanity!
‘What are you even talking about here? I sat here among a lot of brave Americans who avoided the trillion-dollar propaganda campaign that was hijacked on the American public… and look at us now! Do you have anything to say?’
McAfee then quickly ended the broadcast on ESPN and told Rodgers: ‘Now we’re digital, now we continue.’ A co-host joked: ‘Now you can really let loose!’
