Sexton: Fauci no longer politically useful with a frustrated electorate
Ex-CIA analyst and radio host Buck Sexton sounds off on COVID mandate politics
ORLANDO, Fla. – In his speech to the 2022 CPAC in Orange County, Fla., over the weekend, former CIA analyst and radio host Buck Sexton called for a "housecleaning of the bureaucracy" within the federal government, including health care establishment that imposed Draconian rules and restrictions on Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
Sexton sat down with Fox News Digital at CPAC for a wide-ranging interview and expounded upon the points he made in his speech.
"The rapid fading of the COVID apparatus and the withdrawal from the constant appearances in the news cycle by the labcoat tyrant Fauci is a direct function of politics," said Sexton, explaining that NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was used as a "weapon' within the federal bureaucracy – first against President Trump and later against any civilian dissidents of the Biden administration and its policies on that front.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace has referred to herself as a mask-loving "Fauci groupie," in reference to her adoration of White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Sexton called the left's mitigation measures "unscientific" and said state governors who refused to impose such mandates ended up experiencing similar or better medical statistics than those who did.
Northeastern governors like Pennsylvania's Tom Wolf, New Jersey's Phil Murphy, Delaware's John Carney, North Carolina's Roy Cooper and West Coast governors like California's Gavin Newsom and Oregon's Kate Brown led the way in imposing forceful and often complex mandates – such as limiting hours of alcohol consumption at taverns in one case -- under threat of fines or other punishments.
South Dakota's Kristi Noem, Florida's Ron DeSantis and Texas' Greg Abbott were seen as governors whose states ultimately fared similarly against COVID in the long term, but unlike many Democrats, did not impose restrictions on their citizens.
"I'm very proud to be one of the earliest outspoken conservatives against all of these measures, recognizing that they had never worked before and there was no scientific basis other than argument and then the suppression of arguments from the other side to believe that they would work now," Sexton said.
New Jersey Gov. Philip J. Murphy and Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas W. Wolf, both Democrats, instituted sweeping COVID mandates throughout 2020-21.
"This is driven by the political cycle. But then again, I argue, or I would argue that so were vaccine mandates. So were all of the different mask mandates. We've seen so much of what was pushed for COVID started out in the minds of the bureaucrats as something that might be worth trying. … And then it became an issue of political and tribal allegiance."
Many times, once authorities decided on a new mandate, the data on its effectiveness was often ignored, he added, pointing to states where there were no mask mandates.
With the interview taking place prior to President Biden's State of the Union Tuesday, Sexton correctly predicted the White House would claim "some kind of win" after his fellow Democrats in control of Congress lifted the mask mandate in time for the nationally-televised address.
"I would argue that the numbers speak for themselves – more dead under Biden from COVID in the same period of time than in the initial stages of the pandemic without a vaccine from Trump. They cannot change those numbers," he said.
"They cannot change the perception here. Biden on COVID could not be a bigger failure."
Sexton called or Fauci – one of the highest-paid bureaucrats who has worked at the NIH in Bethesda, Md., since 1968 – to be both "repudiated professionally" and investigated by Congress if Republicans are successful in taking back power later this year.
Prior to the State of the Union, many Democratic governors like Murphy, Carney and Connecticut's Ned Lamont walked back their COVID-era restrictions. As Sexton previously noted on "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," Lamont drew criticism for claiming Connecticut residents have "earned this freedom".
At CPAC, Sexton said he will work hard to make sure the American people do not forget over the next eight months what Fauci and the Democrats did to them, their families, and their occupations:
"I view it as my mission in life between now and Election Day to remind as many Americans as possible," Sexton told Fox News Digital.
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Then-candidate Ron DeSantis holds a rally in Orlando, Florida. (REUTERS/Carlo Allegri)
"And I'm fortunate enough to be on a radio show with millions and millions of listeners, so I think we can have an impact," he said. "My esteemed co-host Clay [Travis], and I, can have a real impact – I view it as my mission in life to remind the American people that the Democrat Party on its own and against all common sense, data, and just basic human dignity, decided to mask, and I would argue, abuse children in schools for months and months beyond any reasonable interpretation of the data."
"I view it as my mission in life to remind everyone who will listen that the Democrats drew circles in parks and told people, 'If you sit in this circle, you're more safe outside from the virus.'"
"It's my mission to remind everybody that there were little footpads in elevators and on escalators telling people to stand six feet apart. And then it was three feet, and then it was 20 feet. And then, 'Oh gosh, we don't even know if this distancing thing did anything' -- And of course it didn't."
Later in the interview, Sexton discussed the Canadian trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates and government overreach, the response by liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the way American truckers have been recently inspired to make their own voices heard in Washington.
Last week, a trucker from Biden's hometown of Scranton organized a convoy that traveled down Interstates 81 and 83 toward Baltimore and Washington to encircle the Capitol Beltway "like a boa constrictor."
Since then, a transcontinental convoy set out from California to potentially enter the District of Columbia itself.
Sexton said that it remains to be seen how the California convoy will comport itself in terms of protest. However, as the left-wing protests that often turned violent in 2020 showed, there have been many times Democrats in power have used protests "as a weapon against those who disagree on entirely political lines."
"So, a protest, or even a riot, that has a left-wing agenda attached to it is to be treated as a free-speech exercise even when it's dangerous and burning down buildings and attacking law enforcement officers," he said. "And conservative protest is either shut down on phony COVID, ‘no mass gatherings’ grounds or, in this case, the claims that we saw in Canada about it being some neo-Nazi white nationalist, domestic terrorist threat – that was just the worst kind of lies."
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau amid trucker protests. (Photo by Mohamed Kadri/NurPhoto via Getty Images | Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Comparing Canadian and American trucker protests, Sexton said that because government overreach and mandates north of the border were present in a much more nationwide context than the U.S. – where many red states in Middle America weren't under the same Draconian orders as on the coasts – it could affect the populist "momentum" of the protests here.
"I think it's very different here because a lot of people live in states that have not been subjected to the same degree of madness," he said.
"It might be harder to get the same kind of momentum as they saw in Canada, where it was really nationwide Fauciism," he added.
"But if they are peaceful, and they are about freedom and individual liberty… then I would stand with them and hope that everyone watches closely to see when the Biden administration is willing to call out men with truncheons and tell them to bludgeon people and when they're not. I think the politics drive that."