Republican Senator Bernie Moreno drops ‘F-bomb’ on TV as he questions Anthony Fauci over pandemic response

During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Republican Bernie Moreno tore into Dr. Anthony Fauci using explicit language while pressing the former public health official on the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Who the f*** do you think you were?” the Ohio senator asked Fauci. “It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.”

Moreno further accused Fauci — former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — of being “more interested in being a celebrity than saving the American people.”

The senator’s high octane rhetoric rang hollow with some commentators. “He has harsher words for Dr. Fauci than his fellow Republican Congressman who allegedly abused his daughter,” HQNewsNow, an account formerly affiliated with Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign, wrote on X.

The reference was to Representative Max Miller, an Ohio Republican who was married to Emily Moreno, the senator’s daughter. She has accused him of domestic abuse, which Miller has denied. Senator Moreno has not publicly commented on the allegations.

Fauci, an immunologist, became a household name while helping lead President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic. Though he initially won praise from Trump, he later drew fierce criticism from conservatives who opposed pandemic restrictions.

His appearance at today’s Senate committee hearing came after Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, subpoenaed Fauci to answer questions about the origins of the virus and his handling of lockdown measures.

In response to each question, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and declined to answer.

Much of the hearing has focused on Fauci’s diary, a more than 1,000-page document covering the years from 2019 to 2022 that Paul released last week. Paul, a former ophthalmologist, said the entries reveal inconsistencies between Fauci’s private views and his public statements.

Paul and other Republicans zeroed in on entries that stated multiple scientists believed the virus may have come from a lab leak, noting that Fauci said publicly at the time a natural spillover was more likely. They accused Fauci, who was issued a preemptive pardon by former President Joe Biden in 2025, of knowingly misleading the public.

They also highlighted entries suggesting that Fauci relished his newfound fame. In one, the former public health official wrote: “It is not [hyperbolic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable [person] in the world.”

In his opening statement, Fauci accused Paul of an “obvious obsession” with seeking his prosecution and making “repeated slanderous comments about me.” When Fauci’s attorney later tried to speak, Paul had him removed from the hearing room.

Democrats on the committee defended Fauci. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal praised the former NIAID chief for saving lives and said the GOP attacks on him are part of a “larger campaign against science and facts.”