Former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci on Sunday pushed back against Steve Bannon’s claim that past comments he made to Fauci were “figure figures.”
Fauci appeared on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday and was asked about Bannon’s previous comments. The former Trump adviser claimed that Bannon was making an analogy when he suggested that Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be fired.
Fauci fired back at Bannon, saying some people would act on such statements.
“Yes, that’s nonsense, it’s a ‘metaphor.’ Words matter, and he thinks it’s a metaphor. And there’s probably one person out of 500 who’s a weirdo who doesn’t think it’s a metaphor and thinks they’re being ordered to do something,” Fauci said.
“So you can say whatever you want, but don’t believe the people who say it’s a metaphor. That’s nonsense. Words matter,” Fauci added.
Bannon, a former strategist for former President Donald Trump, was ordered to serve time in prison by July 1 for contempt of Congress. In a previous interview with This Week, Bannon defended himself over past comments he made calling for the heads of Wray and Fauci to be put on spears.
“Thousands of times a day in this town, people say, ‘We’ve got to put their neck on the end of a spear. We’ve got their neck on the end of a spear,’ and it’s a metaphor,” Bannon said.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl noted that Bannon made these comments at a time when Fauci and Wray were “facing death threats.”
“That’s a perfect metaphor. Everybody gets it. And by the way, I think they banned us from Twitter. They banned us from Facebook for that. And guess what? The show got even bigger,” Bannon replied.
Kahl was referring to comments Bannon made on his podcast, “War Room,” in 2020.
“I would actually love to go back to Tudor England and put their heads on pikes and stand them on either side of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats: follow the plan or get out,” Bannon said at the time.
Facebook did not remove Bannon’s account at the time but did remove the video of his comments, and Twitter (the social media platform now known as X) suspended Bannon’s podcast account at the time.
Fauci has previously spoken out about death threats he received while leading the White House’s COVID-19 response, and he choked up while describing threats directed at him and his family during testimony before a House committee earlier this month.
