Danica Patrick has entered the chat amid Aaron Rogers’ beef with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“F***ing asshole,” Patrick, 44, wrote via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, August 6, alongside a post from conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley declaring that Fauci, 85, “needs to be jailed” for how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Us has reached out to Fauci for comment.
Patrick’s disdain for Fauci came a few days after Rodgers, who dated the NASCAR driver from 2017 to 2020, went on a rant against the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during a Monday, August 3 appearance on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show. The quarterback, 42, called Fauci a “coward” for repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment during his senate hearing last week.
“I’m going to plead the fifth. Like that absolute coward, Tony Fauci. Absolute coward,” Rodgers retorted. “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, ‘I am science,’ and you get up there and you can’t answer a question? What are we doing?”
Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, fired back at Rodgers in a Tuesday, August 4, statement to The Athletic, “Aaron Rodgers doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He should stick to football.”
Fauci previously explained his decision to plead the fifth more during his opening statement before the hearing began.
“Given Senator [Rand] Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me,” Fauci said in July. “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, ‘Behind bars.’”
Fauci previously served as Chief Medical Advisor to President Donald Trump during his first term. Fauci became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic as he became the face of the country’s response and the health and safety mandates that followed.
During that time, Rodgers sparked controversy after following his comments about getting vaccinated.
The athlete claimed during a press conference that he was “immunized” only to test positive for COVID months later. After testing positive for the disease, Rodgers clarified that he underwent his own protocol and treatments to “stimulate my immune system to create a defense against COVID” following his own “research” into the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I didn’t lie in the initial press conference,” Rodgers claimed during a November 2022 appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “And at the time my plan was to say I’ve been immunized. It wasn’t some sort of ruse or lie … I found an immunization protocol that could best protect me and my teammates. And it was a long-term protocol that involved multiple months.”
