Meghan McCain Wants Dr. Anthony Fauci Replaced With Someone Who “Understands Science” – Deadline

Say what you will, The View‘s Meghan McCain knows how to trend: Today her call for the replacement of Dr. Anthony Fauci with someone “who does understand science” is heating up Twitter.

Or perhaps it’s the “do you know who I am?” tone of her complaint: “The fact that I, Meghan McCain, co-host of The View, don’t know when or how I will be able to get a vaccine because the rollout for my age range and my health is so nebulous, I have no idea when and how I get it,” she said on today’s episode of the ABC talk show.

McCain was reacting to Fauci’s appearance on CNN yesterday when the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases declined to provide the network’s Dana Bash with a specific recommendation on when vaccinated grandparents could have dinner with their grandchildren. (Fauci later said on the program, “If normality means exactly the way things were before we had this happen to us, I mean, I can’t predict that. But obviously I think we’re going to have a significant degree of normality beyond … the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year.”)

The View co-host wanted more. “The fact that Dr. Fauci is going on CNN and he can’t tell me if I get the vaccine, I’ll be able to have dinner with my family, it’s terribly inconsistent messaging.” Later McCain said she wanted “something to look forward to and to hope for,” suggesting she wasn’t getting that from Fauci.

McCain added that the U.S. was lagging behind Israel’s reported vaccination rate of half the country’s adult population. “I’m over Dr. Fauci. I think we need to have more people giving more opinions and honestly, quite frankly, I think the Biden administration should remove [Fauci] and put someone else in place that maybe does understand science, or can talk to other countries about how we can be more like these places who are doing this successfully.”

The View moderator Whoopi Goldberg countered McCain’s opinion by pointing out the difference in population size between the U.S. and Israel, “and they didn’t have a lot of issues with people not wearing masks.” She added, “You probably could get your shot, but you’re going to go outside and be surrounded by people who have not gotten their shot, and they don’t know yet…how protected you’re going be. This is all stuff that we’ll know when the science makes sense.”