Surgeon General Says He’d Fire Jesse Watters Over ‘Reprehensible’ Fauci Comments: ‘Disgusting Rhetoric’

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy weighed in on remarks made by Fox News host Jesse Watters about Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling them “reprehensible.” The nation’s top doctor said he would fire Watters over comments in which he used the term “kill shot” while instructing conservatives on how to create a viral video by harassing Fauci in public.

Watters asked attendees of Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest summit to take a metaphorical “kill shot” at the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, and the comments went viral by Tuesday morning. The Fox News host was talking about Fauci in the context of connecting him to allegations that his agency helped fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. That research may have sparked the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fox News has defended its employee while numerous individuals, including Fauci, have called for his termination from the network. On Tuesday’s The ReidOut, the U.S. surgeon general joined the chorus of those calling for Watters’ job after he was asked about the drama by host Joy Reid.

“I did hear about the comment,” said Murthy. “And you know, Dr. Fauci is a close colleague, he’s a good friend. But most importantly he is a public servant of high integrity who has sought to serve the United States of America for more than four decades.”

Murthy added,

But for anybody out there to use language that would encourage violence or speak to violence – not just against Dr. Fauci, but against anybody, especially somebody who is trying to do good for the country –that’s reprehensible. It’s not modeled on the kind of values I would certainly hope to raise my kids with. I’ll tell you this, too, Joy. We as a country, in moments like this, we have to come together. We shouldn’t be splintering apart. We shouldn’t throw bombs at other people and trying to turn people against one another. The voices of disunity, voices that endorse violence, those are the voices that threaten to tear our country apart. That make it harder to get through a pandemic like this.

Murthy told Reid that if he were employing Watters, the Fox News personality would be promptly fired:

And lastly, I’ll say this. If somebody like that worked in my office, in any organization that I ran, they certainly wouldn’t be working there for much longer after a comment like that. We, all of us and the roles that we have in our life, we have choices to make about whether we support or passively endorse values and statements like that, that endorse violence. And this is a time where we have to take a stand against the kind of nonsense and disgusting rhetoric that I think have poisoned public debate and turned people against each other. When what we really need is for people to come together in the face of this dangerous pandemic.

Watters, when addressing Fauci, said at the at Turning Point USA summit, “Now you’re going for the kill shot. The kill shot with an ambush is deadly because he doesn’t see it coming. This is when you say ‘Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?’ Boom! He is dead! He is dead! He’s done!”

Fox News in a statement issued Tuesday said Watters’ comments were taken out of context.

Watch above, via MSNBC.