Former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci responded to Steve Bannon on Sunday for saying his past comments directed at Fauci were a “metaphor.”
Fauci, in a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” was asked about Bannon’s past comments. The former Trump adviser argued that his past comments suggesting that Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded were a metaphor.
Fauci dismissed Bannon, saying some people might act on comments like that.
“Yes, that is nonsense, ‘figure of speech’. Words are important and he thinks it is a figure of speech. And then you have maybe one in 500 out there who are crazy, who don’t think this is a figure of speech and who think it’s an order to go ahead and do something,” Fauci said.
“And so, these people who say they can say whatever they want, but it’s a figure of speech, don’t believe it. It makes no sense. Words matter,” Fauci added.
Bannon, a former strategist for former President Trump, was ordered to report to prison until July 1 on contempt of court charges. In a previous interview on “This Week,” Bannon defended himself from his previous comments, calling for Wray and Fauci’s heads to be on stakes.
“In this town, a thousand times a day, people say, ‘We’ve got to put their head on the spear. We put his head on a spear. It was a metaphor,” Bannon said.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl noted that Bannon made these comments when Fauci and Wray were “facing death threats.”
“It’s a total metaphor. Anyone understands this. That’s your – by the way, they banned us, I think, on Twitter. They banned us on Facebook for this. And guess what? The show just got bigger,” replied Bannon.
Karl was referring to 2020 comments made by Bannon on his “War Room” podcast.
“Actually, I would like to go back to the old days of Tudor England. I would put their heads on pikes, right, I would put them in both corners of the White House as a warning to the federal bureaucrats: either you get with the program or go away,” Bannon said at the time.
Facebook did not remove Bannon’s account at the time, but it did remove the video from the comments. Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, suspended his podcast account at the time.
Fauci has previously opened up about the death threats he faced while leading the White House response to COVID-19. He choked up when talking about threats made to him and his family during his testimony to a House committee earlier this month.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
