Former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared to tear up while watching incoming President Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony, Fox News reported. Fauci’s misty-eyed moment was revealed Tuesday in a new PBS documentary.
The feature-length documentary was part of PBS’ “American Masters” program. According to the documentary, the crew began filming Fauci in January 2021 and continued for 23 months until his retirement in December.
At the time of the tears, Fauci mostly waxed philosophical, discussing his experience dealing with the pandemic and seldom referring to Trump, whose name he did not speak. Some of this is attributable to PBS, which placed Fauci’s comments as voiceovers.
“The stress of the fact that you’re responsible for something that’s killing a lot of people, 400,000 individual people, people who have seen their loved ones die without even being able to be near them,” is the voiceover that PBS selected for the tear-jerking moment, according to the Fox report.
Watch:
It is believed that when he said “responsible for,” Fauci was referring to his responsibility to direct the government’s response to the pandemic and was not referring to reports of his involvement in gain-of-function research here and abroad following its relocation to China.
The Fox piece moved on to the widely watched exchange between Fauci and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser and a man on his porch who expressed reluctance to take the pair’s recommendations at face value. “[Your] campaign is about fear. It’s about inciting fear in people. You all attack people with fear.”
Fauci did not appear to tear up during this exchange.
