I regret to inform you that Dr. Anthony Fauci is at it again. The self-proclaimed god of science, by which any attack on him is literally an attack on the very institution itself, took his narcissism to another level on a recent podcast.

Talking to Kara Swisher, Fauci proclaimed that his critics are all bad-faith partisans unfairly attacking him. But in a weird twist, he did so while talking about himself in the third person. You know, because 2021 isn’t dumb enough.

Fauci to @KaraSwisher: "The more extreme they get, the more obvious how political it is… 'Fauci has blood in his hands.' Are you kidding me?… Here's a guy whose entire life has been devoted to saving lives, and now you're telling me he's like Hitler?" https://t.co/IZtxnywtwA

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 20, 2021

No, we are not kidding. Fauci does have blood on his hands. Not only was his handling of the pandemic deeply politicized, shown even more so by the release of his emails, but Fauci was also in charge of a grant that made its way to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to fund gain-of-function research, likely creating COVID-19.

In a country that actually held people accountable (who aren’t Republicans, I mean), Fauci would have been fired sometime last year. Unfortunately, Donald Trump punted on the chance, while Joe Biden elevated Fauci to the supreme leader of science in his floundering administration.

Fauci’s comments came in the context of a wider series of misleading statements he gave to Axios.

Fauci to @KaraSwisher: "The more extreme they get, the more obvious how political it is… 'Fauci has blood in his hands.' Are you kidding me?… Here's a guy whose entire life has been devoted to saving lives, and now you're telling me he's like Hitler?" https://t.co/IZtxnywtwA

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 20, 2021

The problem is that we know that’s not true. Fauci originally claimed that he mislead the American people about masks in order to protect PPE stockpiles. And for the “fact-checkers” ready to smite this article down for daring to note that Fauci isn’t perfectly honest at all times, here’s CNN noting that he did do that.

While Fauci, along with several other US health leaders, initially advised people not to wear masks, Fauci later said that he was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough protective equipment for health care workers. This was also early in the pandemic before public health experts fully knew how contagious the disease was and how it spread.

Fauci’s stated reason for saying not to wear masks early on was to protect PPE stockpiles for first responders. Naturally, that indicated that he knew behind-the-scenes that masks worked at the time (I think he’s wrong, but that’s another topic). It was never plausible that masks worked for doctors, but not regular people as if they weren’t all human beings. Yet, if Fauci’s excuse is true about doing what he did to protect PPE supplies, then clearly no “science” changed on the actual efficacy of mask-wearing. It simply can’t be both; though, Fauci has claimed it to be.

Yet, Fauci is seemingly glossing over his earlier claims, now saying the “science” changed on masks. If the science changed, then why didn’t he say that from the beginning — instead of claiming to not promote masks out of medical necessity?

In short, Fauci is a manipulative hack who has no business being near any structure of power. Yet, that points to something bigger — our bureaucracies are abject garbage.

Spare me the “civil servant” nonsense. It’s hardly a great sacrifice to get over a dozen paid holidays a year, while making more than the private sector, with benefits that would make most people’s eyes pop. The overwhelming majority of bureaucrats and the workers within their agencies are left-leaning. That plays out every day in our regulatory system. Fauci is just another hanger-on, making far more money than he’s worth while sucking up accolades he doesn’t deserve.

The only reason he’s even a thing is that he represented a foil to Donald Trump, and in today’s shallow political environment, that’s all it takes to be beloved.