Nicki Minaj has sharply criticised Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in an extended social media post, days after the former public health official appeared before a Senate committee and repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer questions.
Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee followed the release of his pandemic-era diary entries by committee chairman Rand Paul.
According to a statement carried by STAT News, Fauci told the panel he declined to answer questions on his lawyers’ advice, citing what he called Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with him and concern that his words could be used against him in a future case.
In the wake of the hearing, Republican representative Rich McCormick introduced legislation that would bar Fauci from returning to government service and open him up to potential criminal prosecution.
Minaj weighed in on X on 31 July, writing at length about what she views as the lasting harm caused by pandemic-era policy.
“Feeding tubes will be his portion. He will lose the ability to speak & then & only then will he feel the collective pain & long term ramifications he caused to new borns, young children who are still trying to become acclimated into society & schools, traumatized pregnant women who couldn’t even have family in the delivery rooms & visits, the elderly who died alone & afraid,” she wrote.
The rapper added, “I’ve been struggling to find the humour in any of this. God bless everyone who made it to the other side.”
She also shared an AI-generated image of Fauci depicted writing in a diary, a reference to his recently released journals, and resurfaced a 2021 article in which Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged her to “think twice” about amplifying vaccine scepticism to her large following.
Not everyone in the entertainment world shares Minaj’s assessment.
On the same week’s episode of Watch What Happens Live, host Andy Cohen praised Fauci for enduring what he called hours of being “grilled, berated, and sworn at” by Senate Republicans, crediting him with leading the federal response to HIV/AIDS as the architect of PEPFAR and crediting that work with saving “over 26 million lives around the world.”
