WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci Demands Fox News FIRE Jesse Watters ‘On the Spot’ for ‘Kill Shot’ Metaphor
Dr. Anthony Fauci reacted with shock over Fox News host Jesse Watters’ deployment of a “kill shot” metaphor during a speech, and demanded the host’s firing “on the spot!”
On Tuesday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, co-anchor John Berman asked the Biden administration’s chief infectious disease expert to weigh in on comments that Watters made during a speech for TPUSA, a pro-Trump organization.
During the speech, Watters described how ordinary citizens could create a viral moment by confronting Fauci in public, and filming it. But he used violent metaphors to do so:
“Now you’re going for the kill shot. The kill shot with an ambush is deadly because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said, and after proposing a talking point, said “Boom, he is dead! He is dead!”
The incendiary, dangerous, violent rhetoric against Dr. Fauci continues at AmericaFest. Fox News host Jesse Watters tells them how to go after him to harass him in public: “Now you go in with the kill shot – deadly. Because, with an ambush, he doesn’t see it coming.” pic.twitter.com/V34YZwDdPD
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 20, 2021
Berman told Fauci that “Jesse Waters, who is a Fox News entertainer, was giving a speech to a conservative group where he talked about you, and suggested to the crowd that they ambush you with what he said was some kind of rhetorical kill shot. That was his exact word.”
“I’m wondering, you know, how much that concerns you when you hear language like that about you and your well-being?” Berman asked.
Fauci called the comment “horrible,” and lamented “that just is such a reflection of the craziness that goes on in society.”
He then went off on Watters and demanded his firing “on the spot”:
The only thing that I had ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices, to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask. And for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?
That’s awful that he said that. And he’s going to go very likely unaccountable. I mean, whatever network he’s on is not going to do anything for him. I mean, that’s crazy. The guy should be fired on the spot!
You can see the entirety of Jesse Watters’ remarks about Fauci here:
Fox News provided the following statement to Mediaite:
“Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context.”
Watch above via CNN
