Well, at least Christine Grady still thinks Dr. Anthony Fauci is No. 1.
Grady, for those of you unfamiliar, is the wife of the former head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, as well as his colleague at Georgetown University.
While I’m assuming she’s had a better few weeks than her husband has — not having her diaries released, not having to take the Fifth Amendment over 100 times before Congress, not facing a potential contempt of Congress charge — I’m also assuming she probably hasn’t had the easiest time of it, either.
Nevertheless, she managed to provide the perfect coda for the Fauci saga by giving the reporters (and, by extension, the rest of America) the finger outside the couple’s Washington, D.C., home.
Not a thumbs up, in case you were wondering.
The photo came after the New York Post caught a “downright miserable” looking Dr. Fauci taking out the trash after a Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt on Thursday.
From the report:
Just hours after the vote to refer him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, a sullen-looking Fauci was spotted frowning as he dutifully wheeled a recycling bin to the curb of the $2.4 million Washington, DC, home he shares was his wife and Georgetown University colleague, Christine Grady.
Fauci later hopped in the passenger seat of a vehicle and was driven away by his wife.
Grady, apparently enraged by the photographer’s presence in their tony neighborhood, flipped off the camera before peeling off.
A bit of bird-watching outside the Fauci residence:
While this is hardly the end of the Fauci saga, if you were going to write a movie about his role in the COVID crisis, you couldn’t script a better final scene than a dejected Anthony taking out the trash while having his wife flip off the world for him.
The fall is almost Shakespearean. At one point in the not-too-distant past, Fauci was the most powerful unelected, non-cabinet official since World War II.
And he acted like it, too. Here was the man as he left government service in 2022, declaring that “I represent science.” (Science was unavailable for comment.)
If Christopher Nolan were directing the story, this would be the flashback that played in black-and-white with heavy reverb just before this scene, from Fauci’s testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week:
And of course, the reason he’s being held in contempt of Congress is that, while the Fifth Amendment protects Americans from self-incrimination, he’s already been given a pardon. He has nothing to incriminate himself against … unless he lies.
So, what say you, Dr. Fauci? Or should we take your wife’s non-verbal gesture as a summation of exactly what you think about the rest of us plebes who suffered at home while you partied with celebrities?
