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The Memo: Can any Republican defeat Trump and DeSantis?

The 2024 election is almost two years away, but it’s already an open question whether anyone other than former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis can become the GOP’s nominee.

Trump and DeSantis have raced out to an early lead over all other possible contenders, despite the fact that the former president is the only major figure to have declared his candidacy.

The dynamic is so striking that some conservatives are talking of the contest as a two-horse race.

“Right now, it looks like the 2024 GOP nominee is going to be a Floridian — the only question is whether it is going to be President Trump or Gov. DeSantis,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “Based on their resources, their name ID, their support, it is essentially their nomination to lose.”

Boosters for other possible contenders push back hard against this idea. But the polls make clear how much Trump and DeSantis overshadow the rest of the possible field.

A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted last week found Trump with 46 percent support among Republican voters and DeSantis with 28 percent. The third placed candidate — former Vice President Mike Pence — was way behind at 7 percent.

The figures vary from poll to poll, but the overall dynamic stays the same.

An Emerson College poll released Nov. 19 put Trump at 55 percent, DeSantis at 25 percent and, again, Pence in third place but in single digits, at 8 percent.

It is not yet certain that DeSantis will enter the race. He has offered fewer direct hints than other contenders that he will do so.

But that may be because he is in a position of strength and doesn’t need to stoke expectations.

DeSantis was the big winner among GOP heavyweights on Election Day, coasting to reelection by roughly 20 points over his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist. He has not been shy about suggesting that his approach in Florida could be a template for Republicans across the nation.

If DeSantis does run, money won’t be a problem. The governor had around $90 million cash on hand even in the closing stages of his reelection race, spread across various accounts. He is also the recipient of a lot of admiring attention from conservative megadonors who have grown tired of Trump’s antics.

A Politico story in early November described DeSantis returning to Florida from Nevada during the summer holding a $10 million check from a real estate magnate, Robert Bigelow. 

Hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin said at a Bloomberg event in Singapore earlier this month he would back DeSantis too — and called Trump a “three-time loser” from whom the GOP needs to “move on.” Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has already given more than $200,000 to DeSantis’s super PAC.

Of course, it’s not as if Trump will be under-resourced. His own war chest, across different groups, is in the ballpark of $100 million — though there will be, at least in theory, restraints on how some of that money can be spent now that the former president is an official candidate.

The financial firepower of Trump and DeSantis also makes clear to other likely contenders just how high the 2024 table stakes are likely to be.

That said, several other leading figures in the party appear poised to move forward.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition last weekend that she was looking at a 2024 campaign “in a serious way.” Haley, who had previously pledged not to run if Trump did so, said, “I’ve never lost an election, and I’m not going to start now.”

At the same event, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joked that the next time some of the contenders might meet could be on a debate stage. “Who knows what nicknames we might have?,” he added, in a mild jab at Trump. 

Pompeo has been more overt than most others in laying the groundwork for a presidential run, including visiting key states like Iowa and New Hampshire, and running digital ads.

Meanwhile, Pence too seems to be edging toward a run, acknowledging he is considering such a move and asserting in more than one interview that he expects the GOP to have “better choices” than Trump in 2024.

The question of how any of these candidates get past Trump and DeSantis isn’t easily answered.

But some within the GOP argue it’s perfectly possible for these figures, or a dark-horse candidate, to break through.

“Of course!” said GOP pollster Glen Bolger. “We just don’t know who it is yet. There is always somebody who gets hot. That doesn’t mean they last, but as the campaign unfolds somebody makes a run. That’s just the tradition.”

On the other side of the aisle, there are some Democrats who believe there are other Republicans beyond the top two who could make a serious run.

“The guy I would worry about, as a Democrat, is Glenn Youngkin,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh. 

Longabaugh argued that the Virginia governor “is a much more personable guy [than DeSantis]. I think he sells better in the early states. And he has navigated a much tougher state winning the governorship in Virginia than DeSantis did in Florida.”

For now, though, Trump and DeSantis are standing way above everyone else on the Republican side. 

The rest of the possible field is struggling just to escape their shadow.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Source: TEST FEED1

Police: 6 people, assailant dead in Walmart shooting

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — A shooter opened fire in a Walmart in Virginia late Tuesday, leaving six people dead, police said, in the second high-profile mass killing in a handful of days. The assailant is also dead.

The store in Chesapeake is now safe and will likely be closed for several days during the investigation, Officer Leo Kosinski said in the early hours of Wednesday.

The shooting came three days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado, killing five people and wounding 17. Earlier in the year, the country was shaken by the deaths of 21 when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Tuesday’s shooting also brought back memories of another at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman police say was targeting Mexicans opened fire at a store in El Paso and killed 22 people.

Earlier, Kosinski said he couldn’t say how the gunman died but that he didn’t believe police fired shots.

The shooting had apparently stopped when police arrived at the store in Chesapeake, which is Virginia’s second-largest city and lies next to the seaside communities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

Mike Kafka, a spokesman for Sentara Healthcare, said in a text message that five patients from the Walmart were being treated at Norfolk General Hospital. Their conditions weren’t immediately available.

Walmart tweeted early Wednesday that it was “shocked at this tragic event.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said in a tweet that he was “sickened by reports of yet another mass shooting, this time at a Walmart in Chesapeake.”

State Sen. Louise Lucas echoed Warner’s sentiment, tweeting that she was “absolutely heartbroken that America’s latest mass shooting took place in a Walmart in my district.”

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy calls on DHS Secretary Mayorkas to resign, threatens impeachment inquiry

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that GOP lawmakers will consider impeachment next year if he does not step down.

“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate, every order, every action and every failure will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said at a press conference in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday.

McCarthy cited the Department of Homeland Security head’s statements to Congress that the border is under control, record border crossing numbers and his ending of the “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy instituted during the Trump administration as reasons for resignation.

“Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’s dereliction of duty,” McCarthy said.

The comments from the minority leader are his strongest words on impeachment to date, but they fall short of a promise to bring up articles against Mayorkas.

McCarthy was nominated by House Republicans to serve as Speaker in the next Congress last week during a closed-door vote.

But he still faces opposition from hard-line conservatives, who called on him to be more aggressive on topics including the impeachment of Biden administration officials and President Biden himself.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, mounted a last-minute protest challenge to McCarthy for Speaker, citing the minority leader’s lack of commitment to impeach Mayorkas. Biggs has previously introduced articles of impeachment against the administration official. He won 31 votes in the secret-ballot House Republican Conference meeting, while McCarthy received 188.

McCarthy needs support from a majority of those voting for a Speaker candidate on the House floor on Jan. 3 in order to be elected to the post.

But Republicans won a narrow majority in the 2022 midterms, and McCarthy has little wiggle room for error on that vote. A few Republicans, including Biggs, have indicated that they will not vote for him.

The press conference with other House GOP members came after a day of touring the U.S.-Mexico border and meeting with border officials.

McCarthy said that Republican Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and James Comer (Ky.), the likely chairs of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees next year, “have my complete support to investigate the collapse of our border, and the shutdown of ICE enforcement.”

“Leader McCarthy is right. Americans deserve accountability for the unprecedented crisis on the southwest border. Republicans will hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable for his failure to enforce immigration law and secure the border through all means necessary,” Jordan, who would oversee impeachment proceedings if they occurred, said in a statement distributed during the press conference.

Republicans made a pledge to investigate the Biden administration’s border and migration policies a key part of their midterm campaign message, and Comer has long said he will hold hearings about the border. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joked in September that the House GOP would give Mayorkas a reserved parking spot because he would be testifying so often.

Mayorkas, who has no plans to resign, pushed back on Congress in a statement issued shortly after McCarthy’s speech.

“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this Department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people. The Department will continue our work to enforce our laws and secure our border, while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

“Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which have not been overhauled in over 40 years,” the statement continued. 

In appearances before Congress last week, Mayorkas maintained that the border is under control, but he acknowledged that the fiscal year ending in September showed that a record 1.7 million migrants attempted to cross the Southwest border.

“The entire hemisphere is suffering a migration crisis. We are seeing unprecedented movement of people from country to country,” he said.

He also pledged to look for new ways to restrict immigration now that a federal court has struck down Title 42, which allowed the agency to quickly expel migrants without seeking asylum due to public health concerns.

Mayorkas said the department is currently evaluating how to expel Venezuelans at the border, a group that makes up a large part of migrants coming to America given the political and economic instability there.

The latest calls for Mayorkas to resign come shortly after U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus resigned from his position after being asked to do so by President Biden.

McCarthy first appeared to open the door to impeachment of Mayorkas at another press conference in April. 

“This is his moment in time to do his job. But at any time if someone is derelict in their job, there is always the option of impeaching somebody,” McCarthy said at an April press conference in Eagle Pass, Texas.

But he later tamped down expectations for impeachment, saying that he does not want the procedure to be political as he claimed Democrats’ impeachment of former President Trump was. McCarthy reiterated that sentiment on Tuesday in El Paso.

“We never do impeachment for political purposes. We’re having investigation,” McCarthy said. 

“We know exactly what Secretary Mayorkas has done. We’ve watched across this nation, something that’s never happened before. We watched him time and again before committee say this border is secure, and we can’t find one border agent who agrees with him,” McCarthy said. “So we will investigate. If investigation leads to impeachment inquiry, we will follow through.”

Rebecca Beitsch contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Judges appear skeptical of Trump special master appointment

Federal appeals judges appeared skeptical Tuesday that former President Trump should have been awarded a third-party special master to review the documents stored in his Florida home as the Justice Department works to nullify the appointment.

Lawyers for the DOJ and Trump appeared before a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the latest battleground as the Justice Department seeks to expedite its access to more than 22,000 pages of government documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

The arguments did not seem to bode well for the Trump team, with one of the judges asking amid the arguments, “What are we doing here?”

On the bench were two Trump appointees — Judge Britt Grant and Judge Andrew Brasher — who previously sided with the Justice Department, granting its request to siphon off the classified materials from the special master review and allowing them to be turned over to investigators.

But the Justice Department hopes to more quickly gain access to the remaining documents in order to inform its investigation, potentially speeding ahead of likely ongoing legal challenges to the review by Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master. 

Trump attorney James Trusty was almost immediately interrupted by Grant after he referred to the search of Trump’s home as a raid, apologizing for using “a loaded term” after the judge inquired whether deeming it the execution of a search warrant would be more accurate.

And at another point, Chief Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, questioned why Trump should be entitled to a special review of the contents collected during the search at his home when few other criminal defendants — let alone those who have yet to be charged — are afforded a similar process. 

“Other than the fact that this involves the former president, everything else about this is indistinguishable from any pre-indictment search warrant,” Pryor said.

“And we’ve got to be concerned about the precedent that we would create that would allow any targets of a federal criminal investigation to go into a district court and to have a district court entertain this kind of petition … and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation.”

Trusty struggled to answer the judge’s questions about prior case law, noting the novel nature of the search of the home of a former president.

“It’s not special treatment. It’s just basic facts of where we are. This is a situation where a political rival has been subjected to a search warrant [where] thousands of personal materials have been taken,” he said.

But at another point, Pryor seemed irritated that Trusty had not demonstrated the ability to meet one of the key tests when seeking the return of seized property — that the government showed a callous disregard for a plaintiff’s constitutional rights.

“The entire premise of the exercise of this extraordinary kind of jurisdiction would be that the seizure itself is unlawful,” he said.

“And if you can’t establish that, then what are we doing here?”

The Justice Department on Tuesday pushed back against the use of a special master, 

“What he wants is not really the documents back. As I said, he already has them back,” Sopan Joshi argued on behalf of the government.

“What he wants is to prevent the government from using the documents, and I’m not sure that that would ever be a valid justification,” he added, noting such a move would usually come through a motion to suppress evidence at a later stage.

Joshi also argued that Trump’s attorneys had laid out a dizzying list of supposed privileges to justify scheduling the records from prosecutors.

Trump’s attorneys, Joshi said, initially raised attorney-client privilege issues only to later bring up executive privilege issues, then claimed some of the documents may have been declassified, then moving to claim some of the presidential records could be his personal property.

“This just sort of emphasizes how anomalous and extraordinary what the district court did here was,” he said.

The hearing was the latest development in the Mar-a-Lago case since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take over both the documents investigation and the DOJ investigation into the events of the Capitol riot.

In court, Trump’s lawyers also argued their position was weakened as they have yet to gain access to an un-redacted copy of the warrant used to gain access to Trump’s property. 

Trump’s team filed a motion to Florida District Court Judge Aileen Cannon – who first appointed the special master – to force DOJ to release the warrant, but it’s unclear if such a motion should be directed to Judge Bruce Reinhart, who first approved the document.

Dearie, the special master, is set to hold a status conference with the two sides next week, where Trusty said they will review some 930 remaining documents.

“The big swaths of that will be decided with a legal ruling rather than kind of a one-by-one look at the document,” he said.

Updated 5:03 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Graham testifies before Georgia grand jury in 2020 election probe

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday testified before a Fulton County, Ga., special grand jury probing 2020 election interference in the state after a months-long attempt to avoid appearing.

Graham, an ally of former President Trump, had cited constitutional arguments as he sought to block a subpoena from the Fulton County district attorney, but the Supreme Court earlier this month paved the way for Graham’s testimony.

“Today, Senator Graham appeared before the Fulton County Special Grand Jury for just over two hours and answered all questions,” Graham’s office said in a statement. “The Senator feels he was treated with respect, professionalism and courtesy. Out of respect for the grand jury process he will not comment on the substance of the questions.”

A judge in July approved the subpoena from District Attorney Fani Willis (D), who expressed interest in hearing from Graham about calls he made to Georgia’s top elections official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), following the 2020 presidential election.

Raffensperger, who has also testified before the grand jury, claimed Graham suggested to him that he should discard some ballots during one of the calls. Graham has denied Raffensperger’s account.

In a separate call, Trump pressed Raffensperger following the election to “find” the roughly 11,000 votes required to overturn President Biden’s victory in the state, a request Raffensperger resisted as he voiced disagreement with Trump’s unfounded claims of mass electoral fraud.

Graham looked to quash Willis’s subpoena, citing the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause, which provides some protections for lawmakers in testifying, among other arguments.

A federal trial judge in September shielded Graham from testifying in fact-finding inquiries related to election procedures and allegations of voter fraud in the state, ruling it constituted “protected legislative activity,” but otherwise allowed his appearance to move forward.

Graham appealed the ruling to an Atlanta-based federal appeals court, but a panel affirmed the prior decision and indicated the South Carolina Republican could object to specific questions in the lower court.

Graham then sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, but the justices rebuffed his request while indicating that constitutional guardrails should apply in his appearance.

His appearance on Tuesday marks the latest Trump ally to testify before the grand jury. Others include Rudy Giuliani, other pro-Trump attorneys and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Willis has previously indicated charges in the criminal probe may come before the end of the calendar year.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden administration extends student loan payment pause to no later than June 2023

The Biden administration on Tuesday extended the pandemic-era student loan payment pause and interest accrual until no later than June 2023 while the administration faces legal challenges to its debt forgiveness plan.

“I’m confident that our student debt relief plan is legal. But it’s on hold because Republican officials want to block it,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s why @SecCardona is extending the payment pause to no later than June 30, 2023, giving the Supreme Court time to hear the case in its current term.”

The pause was set to expire on Dec. 31 after Biden extended it in August around the same time he announced the student loan forgiveness program. At the time, the White House called that extension “one final time.”

The latest extension into next year will give the Supreme Court time to decide whether it will rule on whether the program can continue.

The payment pause will end “no later than June 30, 2023,” Biden said, because payments will resume 60 days after the Education Department is permitted to implement the program or the litigation is resolved, which could come before June. 

Loan payments were first put on hold in March 2020 under former President Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to give individuals relief from paying their student loan bills. The freeze has since been extended six times.

Biden’s long-awaited forgiveness program has stopped accepting applications after it was blocked by several court challenges.

The Biden administration on Friday urged the Supreme Court to clear one of the legal obstacles blocking its student debt relief program, as part of the administration’s broader legal effort to have the policy reinstated.

The administration is currently fending off two separate rulings issued over the last two weeks that have effectively halted Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which would give federal borrowers making less than $125,000 a year up to $10,000 debt relief.  

That move came after a unanimous three-judge panel on the 8th Circuit halted Biden’s massive debt relief plan, which had already been blocked nationwide by a separate court ruling.

In an earlier legal development, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas invalidated the program, saying the presidential action unlawfully encroached on Congress’s power. 

The administration has vowed to fight the challenges. 

“We’re not going to back down though on our fight to give families breathing room,” Biden said in his announcement. “That’s why the Department of Justice is asking the Supreme Court of the United States to rule on the case. But it isn’t fair to ask tens of millions of borrowers who are eligible to relief to resume their student debt payments while the courts consider the lawsuits.”

More than 23 million people applied for student loan relief before the applications closed.

Student loan advocates called the extension announced on Tuesday a necessary step, but pushed the administration to fight back against the legal challenges.

“The least the Biden administration could do is not collect on a debt they promised they would cancel,” Braxton Brewington, spokesperson for the Debt Collective, said in a statement on Tuesday. “This pause extension is necessary, but also the bare minimum. What 45 million borrowers truly need is a Biden administration that won’t allow fringe lawsuits and right-wing courts to undermine economic relief that’s already been approved.”

Natalia Abrams, president of the Student Debt Crisis Center President, applauded Biden for the move. 

“Too many borrowers, parents, and students have yet to recover from the financial harm caused by the pandemic and the possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases is proof that this crisis is not over. Student debt cancellation is essential to helping borrowers recover from the pandemic, but it remains stuck in the courts,” she said in a statement.

Updated 4:05 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Supreme Court declines to shield Trump tax returns from Congress

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal from former President Trump seeking to shield his tax returns from House Democrats, capping a multi-year legal battle and paving the way for the release of his tax returns.

The order — which had no noted dissents — was in response to an appeal Trump filed with the Supreme Court late last month after a lower court declined to reverse its ruling mandating that he turn over his tax records to the House Ways and Means Committee. 

Chief Justice John Roberts had temporarily blocked their release in a Nov. 1 order while the court considered the matter.

House Democrats have been seeking the records for years, saying they need to probe how the IRS conducts its routine presidential audits, while Trump’s attorneys have argued the matter is purely political. 

“The Committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public,” Trump’s attorneys wrote to the court in October.

While the order from the Supreme Court is a win for House Democrats, it’s unclear how useful it will be for them. It’s not clear how quickly the IRS would turn over the records, and House Republicans are expected to withdraw the request when they take over in January.

Trump’s tax records have been shrouded in secrecy since he bucked the tradition of publicly sharing them during his first presidential run in 2016, citing an audit.

Federal law mandates that tax returns are generally confidential unless an exception applies, one of which includes a written request by the House Ways and Means Committee. The issue in Trump’s litigation in large part turns on whether this exception is constitutional.

Presidents and vice presidents have undergone such auditing since 1977. Federal tax law also requires Treasury Department officials to hand over individual tax returns upon receiving a written request from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. 

The latest phase of litigation arose last year when Trump asked a federal judge in D.C. to block the IRS from handing over his records, citing his privacy concerns and challenging the constitutionality of the House committee’s request.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, dismissed Trump’s suit late last year. His ruling was later affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which in October rejected Trump’s request to rehear the case, prompting his turn to the Supreme Court.

Congressional investigators had celebrated the October appeals court ruling.

“The law has always been on our side,” House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “Former President Trump has tried to delay the inevitable, but once again, the Court has affirmed the strength of our position. We’ve waited long enough—we must begin our oversight of the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible.”

Updated: 3:11 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Barr warns Trump 'will burn the whole house down,' calls for new GOP leader

Former Attorney General William Bar on Monday called for a new leader of the Republican Party, warning in a blistering rebuke that former President Trump “will burn the whole house down.”

“Unless the rest of the party goes along with him, he will burn the whole house down by leading ‘his people’ out of the GOP,” Barr said in a scathing op-ed published in the New York Post on Monday. 

“Trump’s willingness to destroy the party if he does not get his way is not based on principle, but on his own supreme narcissism,” he added. “His egoism makes him unable to think of a political party as anything but an extension of himself — a cult of personality.”

Barr’s comments follow the 2022 midterm elections, where Republicans were expected to see a “red wave” in the House, taking control of the chamber by a wide margin. Some polls before the midterms also showed that Republicans had a good chance of capturing the Senate.

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However, Democrats kept control of the Senate, and while the GOP did gain control of the House, the final margin was significantly smaller than anticipated.

Several high-profile candidates who were endorsed by Trump, including Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters (R) and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz (R), lost to their Democratic opponents.

Barr has become a frequent critic of his former boss since leaving Trump’s administration in December 2020. He resigned as attorney general after contradicting Trump’s unsupported claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.

Barr has also separated himself from Trump and the rest of the GOP on the subject of the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Barr has consistently rejected Trump’s claims about classified and sensitive documents recovered after the FBI executed a search warrant of the Palm Beach, Fla., residence.

The former attorney general has said he is “skeptical” of Trump’s claims that he declassified the documents. Barr said that there was “no justification” for taking the documents from the White House and criticized a court’s decision to appoint a special master in the case.

In an interview on Friday, Barr added that the Justice Department likely has a “basis for legitimately indicting” Trump over his handling of the sensitive documents.

In his op-ed published Monday, Barr acknowledged the Trump administration’s “substantive achievements,” but said he believes it’s “time for new leadership.” 

“It is painfully clear from his track record in both the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms that Donald Trump is neither capable of forging this winning coalition nor delivering the decisive and durable victory required,” Barr said. 

“Indeed, among the current crop of potential nominees, Trump is the person least able to unite the party and the one most likely to lose the general election,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Fauci makes final appearance in White House briefing room

Chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci made his final appearance in the White House briefing room Tuesday as he retires from government.

“I’ll let other people judge the value or not of my accomplishments, but what I would like people to remember about what I’ve done, is that every day, for all of those years, I’ve given it everything that I have and I’ve never left anything on the field,” Fauci said of his legacy.

“So if they want to remember me, whether they judge rightly or wrongly what I’ve done, I gave it all I got for many decades,” Fauci said. 

The longtime health official has worked under seven presidents, serving 54 years with the National Institutes of Health and 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. But he surged to popularity as one of the leaders of the pandemic response during the Trump administration.

However, his guidance on masks and vaccines has drawn criticism and attacks from conservative lawmakers and officials including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who he frequently sparred with during Senate hearings.

Fauci said COVID-19 is “really, really very important” but called the pandemic “a fragment” of his work in the health space. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lauded Fauci for his leadership in the medical field for decades before she welcomed him to join her “one more time at the podium.”

“For so many Americans throughout our fight with COVID, Dr. Fauci has been a source of information and facts, but Dr. Fauci’s leadership and legacy stretch far beyond the past couple of years,” Jean-Pierre.

“Whether it be HIV AIDS, Ebola or COVID-19, for close to four decades, and under seven Republican and Democratic presidents, Dr. Fauci has always led with the science, and our country is stronger and healthier because of his leadership,” Jean-Pierre said.

Fauci announced earlier this year that he would step down from his position by the end of President Biden’s time in office, but was quick to clarify that he was only retreating from his government role to “pursue the next chapter” in his career. 

“Hard to follow Dr. Fauci, who I would argue has been the most important consequential public servant in the United States in the last half century and a leader and a role model for so many,” said White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha after Fauci stepped away from the podium. “Tony, thank you.”

Fauci reflected on the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, deriding the “divisiveness” that has plagued the pandemic response.

“As a physician, it pains me, because I don’t want to see anybody get infected. I don’t want to see anybody hospitalized. And I don’t want to see anybody die from COVID,” Fauci said.

“Whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, doesn’t make any difference to me. I look upon it the same way as I did in the emergency room in the middle of New York City, when I was taking care of everybody that was coming in off the street.”

In his final message from the briefing room, he also urged Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

“My message, and my final message, maybe the final message I get from this podium, is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community,” Fauci said.

Source: TEST FEED1