Aaron Rodgers used a training camp interview with Pat McAfee to launch into a blistering attack on Anthony Fauci, calling the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases “That absolute coward, Tony Fauci,” and later adding, “Tony Fauci is an absolute criminal.”
The exchange came Monday on The Pat McAfee Show, with McAfee on hand at Steelers camp. Rodgers had been asked about what it means to enter what he has described as his last season, with McAfee bringing up the quarterback’s openness about returning for another year and the presence of head coach Mike McCarthy, with whom Rodgers won a Super Bowl as a member of the Green Bay Packers.
“Like, that’s a real thing. It feels like, because is everything better?
Is everything funner? Is everything more awesome?
Like, how do you kind of view this year versus maybe the years of the past?” McAfee asked.
Rodgers’ answer quickly veered in a different direction.
“I’m going to plead the Fifth,” Rodgers said, referencing Fauci pleading the Fifth over 100 times in a recent congressional hearing.
He then unloaded.
“That absolute coward, Tony Fauci,” Rodgers went on. “Absolute coward.
Yeah. Are you kidding me?
“You got a pardon and you pleaded over 100 times at the White House? What are you scared of, Tony?
I thought you were the science. I thought you were, ‘I am science,’ and you get up there and you can’t answer a question?
“And how much time did the network spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis’s wedding?
Yeah. Did they do even a minute?
Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci?”
Rodgers also appeared to take aim at ESPN over not covering the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini scandal before being steered back to Fauci.
“Seriously, what are they going to say about me now? Now, now you can’t talk about the COVID stuff because obviously it was, it was made, you know, in a lab in China.
That’s like not even questionable anymore. Tony Fauci is an absolute criminal.
I’m on, I’m on good terms with my family. I’m on good terms with my family.
What are you gonna say now? What are you gonna say now?
…
“It’s been a great, great life and a great career, and it’s nice to be sitting on this side now, especially after that coward pleaded the Fifth over 100 times. Okay, I thought you had a part in there, Tony. Why couldn’t you, uh, answer one question the entire time?”
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