Cruz says it's time for Fauci to go: 'He's political and not scientific'

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Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz joined the growing list of GOP lawmakers calling for the removal of Dr. Anthony Fauci Tuesday, arguing he is "political and not scientific."

Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has faced severe backlash following the release of thousands of emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests earlier this month, revealing the top doctor's communications from early on in the pandemic.

Republicans have taken issue with what they believe is a stance reversal by Fauci on issues ranging from masks mandates to the origin of the coronavirus. 

FAUCI HAUNTED BY THE GHOSTS OF ABANDONED CORONAVIRUS OPINIONS

"This is someone that had a position of enormous responsibility in the government, during a time of great peril during a time of a worldwide pandemic," Cruz said in a Tuesday interview with radio host Michael Berry. "And what these emails showed is that he behaved more like a two-bit politician than a scientist."

Cruz accused Fauci of following Democratic talking points when he advised people that it was unnecessary to wear masks during the early stages of the pandemic, before reversing course.

"He was saying whatever was politically convenient," Cruz said. "He initially said masks were not very helpful. That's what the science told him. But then the politics said, let's have everyone wear masks."

For several weeks following the outbreak of coronavirus in the U.S., Fauci said that wearing masks was unnecessary unless someone was already infected with the deadly virus. 

Though Cruz, along with other members of the GOP Party, have pointed to Fauci’s emails as a smoking gun, the infectious disease specialist explained his policy reversal last June. 

Fauci and other top health officials reversed their stance on masks as the infection rate spiked across the country by April 2020. 

GOP SENATORS DEMAND COVID-19, WUHAN DOCUMENTS FROM HHS, NIH

Fauci then admitted in a June 2020 interview with The Street that people were initially advised not to wear masks to preserve the limited supply for health care workers and that masks "can protect you to a certain degree."

When asked why Americans were not told to wear masks from the beginning, he said:

"The reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, we were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply," he said. "And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

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But Cruz maintains that Fauci was overly harsh on red states regarding mask mandates, and not on blue states, like New York, that saw swaths of underreported nursing home deaths. 

 "He's political and not scientific and that is completely unacceptable," Cruz said Tuesday.