After Politico reported this week that the nation’s top infectious disease expert had been declining Fox interview requests for months, Dr. Anthony Fauci will make his return to the network’s airwaves on Friday. Mediaite was first to report, and The Daily Beast has since confirmed, that the chief White House medical adviser will appear on Fox Business Network’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast at 1 p.m. Friday. The interview will then re-air on anchor Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show Your World later that afternoon.
According to Politico, Fauci—who has been increasingly villainized by right-wing media—had turned down nearly all interviews requests from Fox News since July, even from the network’s esteemed “hard news” hosts such as Bret Baier and Cavuto. One notable exception, however, was an Oct. 17 sit-down with Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace.
Fauci’s Fox appearance comes as some of the network’s more provocative personalities have used extreme rhetoric towards the doctor. Fox Nation host Lara Logan sparked widespread backlash this week for comparing Fauci to the infamous Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, recently described Fauci as “a shorter version of Benito Mussolini.”
