U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno to Anthony Fauci: ‘It is a total disgrace what you did to this country’

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, blasted Anthony Fauci, the former government bureaucrat who took center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying Fauci’s approach to fighting the pandemic led him to seek public office in 2024.

During a July 29 Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing, Fauci, who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until 2022, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment. When asked by Moreno who wrote the Fifth Amendment, Fauci wouldn’t answer, instead again opting to take the Fifth.

My simple question for Anthony Fauci this morning: who the fuck do you think you are?

Fauci’s message to the countless Americans he locked in their homes, who were fired from their jobs over vax mandates, the children he forced to wear masks? “I plead the 5th.” Criminal. pic.twitter.com/mm9JWQSf6Z

— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) July 29, 2026

“It was about six years ago today that I decided I’m going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for the United States Senate,” Moreno said. “Here I am sitting in front of you six years later, saying, ‘Who the f*** do you think you were for doing that?’ It is a total disgrace what you did to this country, and if my Democrat colleagues are standing there defending you, I hope the voters of the United States of America watch the clips of every one of you doting on a guy who was more interested in being a celebrity than saving American people.

“I will make it my mission to make certain that every single one of those … Democrats who did that will see that clip over and over and over again, because … there is no defense of what you did,” Moreno added. “You may have had a 50-plus year legacy of public service, but it ends in total and complete disgrace. So let me ask you an opportunity to answer one question: Will you apologize? Just apologize to the people who you harmed through your actions. …Do you have the dignity to just say you’re sorry?”

Moreno cited an Ohio family who was arrested while sitting by themselves without masks watching a football game.

“Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people, and that is you,” Moreno said. “Your advice to communities like that, to idiotic politicians who enforced those rules, arrested that mom for watching a football game with her own family outside. When that story broke, I said to myself, ‘I cannot stand idly on the side and watch this happen.’”

Capitol Police escorted Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, out of the hearing at the request of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky. Democratic President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci just before President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025.