CPAC 2023: Eric Schmitt recounts Fauci lashing out at reporter for sneezing

Ryan King

March 02, 07:40 PM March 02, 07:40 PM

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) recalled how Dr. Anthony Fauci lectured a reporter to wear a mask after sneezing during a deposition several months.

Schmitt won court approval last year to depose Fauci and a bevy of other current and former Biden administration officials for his sweeping lawsuit over the government allegedly "colluding to suppress freedom of speech" with Big Tech. At the time, Schmitt was serving as the attorney general of Missouri; he won his Senate seat in the 2022 cycle.

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"In the middle of that deposition, I'm kidding you not, a court reporter sneezed. What did Anthony Fauci do? He demanded that she wear a mask. I am not making this up. This was just a couple of months ago, and this is the temperament, by the way, of the guy who was in charge of all of this, who wanted power and control — a guy who claimed he was the science."

In the lawsuit, Schmitt and fellow Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry accused the government of impeding upon people's First Amendment rights by flagging content, including posts related to the pandemic, for Big Tech companies to evaluate — something the duo argued amounted to censorship.

He deposed Fauci and others to learn more about their behind-the-scenes activities and communications with social media companies during the pandemic.

Fauci stepped down as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden late last year. At one point, he contracted COVID-19 and blamed his infection on a brief slip-up at a college reunion party where he briefly removed his mask.

During the beginning stages of the pandemic, Fauci encouraged civilians not to wear masks, fearing that doing so would limit the supplies available for medical professionals at the onset of the pandemic. Later on in the pandemic, he later encouraged everyday people to wear masks to slow the spread of the virus. He has since defended the apparent reversal.

"When he was privately messaged in an email we confronted him with by a colleague in early 2020 about whether she should wear a mask on a plane or not, he said they were ineffective. But for the rest of us, we were required to wear them on planes, and our kids had to wear masks in schools all day long," Schmitt chided.

"When Fauci speaks, Big Tech censors, and this can never happen again,” he added

Now that he is in the Senate, Schmitt vowed to continue his work to safeguard First Amendment rights for everyone and issued a clarion call for conservatives to do the same.

"We — conservatives, the people in this room — we have to be the guardians of free speech. That is our vision. That is our goal. If you control the flow of information to limit speech, you can control [us], and that's exactly what their aim is: power and control," Schmitt said to applause.