Explained: Trump does not have the power to fire Fauci

Unfortunately for America, the longtime federal bureaucrat is an untouchable.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has become a mad scientist. The publicity-drunk bureaucrat has exposed himself as both massively deceitful and historically ill-equipped to lead a U.S. government health agency. For quite some time, rational-minded observers of the COVID-19 pandemic have been calling for the firing of Fauci, the public health panic salesman who has been embedded in the U.S. federal bureaucracy for an astonishing 52 years, and has served atop the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 36 years. He is the highest paid federal employee in America.

Dr. Fauci launched himself into the spotlight earlier this year when he convinced the president to temporarily embrace lockdowns (a concept first brought to the forefront in Wuhan, China) and other restrictions as a remedy to the pandemic. Fauci and his colleague, Dr. Deborah Birx, brought purported epidemiological models to the president’s attention in the form of a hostage negotiation, promising that millions of people would die if the president did not sound the alarm and call for restrictions immediately. The president, regrettably, followed the advice of the government scientists, and unsurprisingly, the models did not accurately predict the trajectory of the pandemic. They were catastrophically wrong. The “cure” presented by Fauci and Birx was a poison pill that ensured widespread economic and societal calamity, and we are still dealing with the ramifications of their COVID “cures,” now many months into our pandemic response.

Given his historical failures, which led to the suffering of millions, many have been calling for the immediate dismissal of Dr. Fauci, who continues to fill what seems to be the majority of his daily schedule with cable news appearances. Fauci has, for months now, continued to mislead the American people by serving up healthy doses of fear, hysteria, and pseudoscience. 

In the private sector, Fauci would have been shown the door many months ago. But this is not the private sector. Fauci works in the big, bloated federal bureaucracy. In the land of government, the act of firing someone for poor job performance, or something even worse, pretty much does not exist.

As a federal bureaucrat, Fauci cannot be fired. The laws on the books since 1978 have made that crystal-clear. Fauci is an untouchable. It’s as simple as that. Without a passed bill in congress reforming the protections of the administrative state, Fauci will do what he pleases without repercussions. Just 0.15 percent of federal employees are fired each year. Now you know why they call the federal bureaucracy “the permanent state.” You have a better chance of dying with COVID (which has an estimated 99.8% recovery rate) than being fired as a federal bureaucrat.

Think of Dr. Fauci as a member of a teachers union, but one with even more protections. If the president wanted to fire Fauci, he would have to ask one of Fauci’s superiors in the Department of Health and Human Services umbrella to launch administrative action against him. This would set off an endless itinerary of meetings, hearings, and back and forths with government lawyers. The process would ultimately take years, and it would in all likelihood result with Fauci being exonerated. Despite the fact that Fauci has become a mad scientist, whose advice has destroyed millions of American families, there is no chance the process would work out in favor of firing Fauci.

I understand that there’s a lot of politics in play, given that we have an election in 5 weeks.

Here’s what the president can do:

The president can boot Fauci off of the White House COVID-19 task force. He can also issue a public rebuke of Fauci, and list all of the ways that the NIAID chief has been historically corrupt and incompetent in his role. Hopefully, the president waits no longer than the day after the election to complete this objective. The good news is that it appears the president no longer values Fauci’s advice. He has hired the brilliant Dr. Scott Atlas as his personal COVID adviser.

Dr. Fauci turns 80 in late December. Let’s hope, for the sake of the health of 330 million Americans, that he considers retiring when that milestone arrives.