The Daily Show roasted Newsmax host Greg Kelly after the conservative commentator brought on a body language expert to analyze Anthony Fauci’s behavior during his Senate hearing.
Host Jordan Klepper ripped into Kelly, one of MAGA’s most ardent supporters, after the conservative host aired a segment in which he enlisted a body language expert to interpret Fauci’s hand gestures as the former health official repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment before a Senate committee on Wednesday.
Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic, appeared under subpoena and faced questions about the origins of the virus—but refused to answer.
Kelly first acknowledged, “I’m no body language expert, but we’re gonna have one in a few minutes.”
He then showed footage of Fauci with his fingertips pressed together and asked his body language expert guest: “Let me show you this. I-- you ever see Mr. Burns on The Simpsons? I still love The Simpsons. And he did this thing with the hands a lot, fingertips on fingertips. What do you make of that? It says something.”
The longtime Daily Show correspondent immediately tore into Kelly.
“It has to say something, right? Otherwise, this whole segment would be stupid. I’d look like the biggest dips--t on TV,” Klepper said.
Klepper aired segments of Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Republicans questioned him about U.S. funding for coronavirus research in China and the origins of COVID-19.
Republicans hoped to get Fauci “to say something on the record that they could use to incriminate him,” Klepper said.
“Unfortunately for them, Fauci had an answer for everything,” Klepper went on.
Fauci invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination and responded repeatedly: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
The hearing, chaired by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, revisited long-running disputes over the lab-leak theory and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding that went to EcoHealth Alliance, which supported research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Paul has argued the work amounted to dangerous gain-of-function research, while Fauci and the NIH have disputed that characterization and denied that NIH-funded research created the virus responsible for the pandemic.
Fauci has not faced any criminal charges in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. Former President Joe Biden granted him a broad preemptive pardon in January 2025 before he left office.
