(Headline USA) Coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci confirmed this week that he plans to retire before the end of President Joe Biden’s presidential term.
“I haven’t made an announcement of my retirement, but it could be anywhere from now until then,” he told Reuters.
Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, but became a source of controversy for his role in the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, he told Politico that he doesn’t see himself staying in the administration past 2024, while insisting that his work overseeing the pandemic might never reach a conclusion on its own.
“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci said.
It was not the first time Fauci has speculated on his exit. He was rumored previously to have been planning to retire prior to the 2022 midterm elections but later moved the goalpost to 2024.
Fauci subsequently clarified that his latest statement still was not his official retirement announcement.
He said he doesn’t anticipate being in the job “at the end of the first term of President Biden, which is in January 2025. Somehow, that got interpreted that it’s announcing my retirement,” he said.
Fauci has previously said that if former President Donald Trump were to become president again, he would step down from his role.
“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 in March.
Fauci’s planned exit could be due the realization that Democrats might not be in power after Biden’s first term.
And Republicans in Congress have already vowed to hold Fauci accountable if they take back the legislature and White House.
“We’re convinced that Dr. Fauci, Dr. [Francis] Collins and others knew, right from the get-go, that this thing most likely came from a lab, and I think they took real concerted steps to make sure the country didn’t get that information,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said last year.
