Elon Musk mocks Fauci as 'creepy' after New York Times report
Fauci's home office is decorated with fan portraits of himself, according to the Times
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Twitter CEO Elon Musk taunted Anthony Fauci after the New York Times reported the government official had walls filled with portraits of himself hanging in his home office.
"Creepy," Musk responded on Twitter.
The NYT spoke to the retiring NIAID Director about his plans for the future and noted how he polarized the country, calling him "America's most loved and hated doctor."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In the same thread Friday, Musk poked fun at Fauci again over the portraits, asking, "Maybe he just loves looking at science?"
(left)Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles as he addresses guests at the Offshore Northern Seas 2022 (ONS) meeting in Stavanger, Norway on August 29, 2022. (right) Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks about the coronavirus during the White House press briefing on Tuesday, November 22, 2022. Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, also spoke. (Getty Images)
Musk was referring to a "Face the Nation" interview late last year, where the government official compared himself to "science."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this, so if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about," Fauci said. "But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science," Fauci said in that 2021 interview.
On Wednesday, the Twitter CEO responded to lingering questions about what the company's policy regarding posts about coronavirus would be going forward. Twitter recently dissolved its COVID-19 misinformation policy which suspended users who shared information that contradicted "authoritative sources."
"New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science," Musk wrote.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}TWITTER USERS PUSH TO BOYCOTT TESLA AFTER ELON MUSK TWEETS HIS PRONOUNS ARE ‘PROSECUTE/FAUCI’
Elon Musk's Twitter profile displayed on a phone screen and Twitter logo displayed on a screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on September 15, 2022. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
"Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist," Musk said of Fauci.
He also noted that the company previously had an internal Slack chat channel called the "Fauci Fan Club."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Earlier this month Musk called out the outgoing government official with a cryptic tweet saying that his pronouns were "Prosecute/Fauci."
Musk teased his reasons for wanting to prosecute Fauci would be explained in an upcoming installment of the "Twitter Files," the ongoing series of Twitter threads revealing the company's inner workings before Musk took over. The latest installment showed evidence of the Trump and Biden administrations leaning on the social media platform to moderate content regarding COVID.
Previous installments have purported to show that the tech giant censored conservatives, worked closely with the FBI and deliberated how to squash the Hunter Biden laptop story.
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