(Headline USA) Coronavirus Czar Anthony Fauci dismissed reports that he is considering retiring before the 2022 midterm elections, saying this weekend that he won’t think about stepping down until the U.S. is “really out” of the pandemic.
Asked whether the U.S. is approaching the end of the pandemic and if he plans to get “some rest,” Fauci told ABC News on Sunday, “I’m not so sure.”
“I want to make sure we’re really out of this before I really seriously consider doing anything different,” he said.
“We’re still in this. We have a way to go,” he said. “I think we got clearly going in the right direction. I hope we stay that way.”
Just a few weeks ago, though, Fauci seemed to confirm his plans to retire.
“I have said that I would stay in what I’m doing until we get out of the pandemic phase, and I think we might be there already,” he told ABC’s “Start Here” podcast.
“I can’t stay at this job forever. Unless my staff is going to find me slumped over my desk one day; I’d rather not do that,” he said.
Rumors of Fauci’s retirement began swirling last month after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., vowed to launch a congressional investigation into him if Republicans take back Congress in November.
“If we take over the Senate next year, I’ll be chairman of the health committee, and I pledge to use the subpoena power to get every last record about the origin of the virus, about Fauci,” Paul said.
Even Fauci acknowledged his job will get much harder with a Republican-controlled legislature in charge.
“They’ll try to beat me up in public, and there’ll be nothing there,” Fauci told the Washington Post. “But it will distract me from doing my job, the way it’s doing right now.”
