5 highlights from Anthony Fauci's tense Senate grilling: 'Total and complete disgrace'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, July 29, 2026

4. Sen. Bernie Moreno: 'Who the f— do you think you were?'

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, delivered an emotional rebuke of Fauci by remembering the mistreatment that everyday Americans faced during the pandemic because of "moronic" politicians who enforced his guidance with state power.

Moreno opened by suggesting that the choice of Fauci's ejected lawyer, whom he called a "dirtbag attorney" who represented former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., on bribery charges, indicates that Fauci knows he is "in deep sh—."

Moreno then asked members of the audience in the room to stand if they had been maligned as racist for noting the virus came from China, if they "thought the six-foot rule was total crap" and questioned the vaccine, if they found the mask policy "outrageous," or if they had been fired and otherwise made to feel they were "a lesser human being" for going against the government's pandemic edicts.

When he asked Fauci to look behind him to see the number of people who stood up to express the shame or other punishment to which they had been subjected, he declined and instead conversed with his attorneys sitting behind him.

Moreno, a businessman who assumed office last year, went on to recount the 2020 story of Alecia Kitts, a mother who was tased and arrested at a junior high school football game in small-town Logan, Ohio, after refusing to wear a face mask or leave the property.

@GovMikeDeWine
What is this about Mike? Alecia Kitts drove an hour and a half from Marietta to Logan, Ohio to watch her son’s seventh grade football game.
In the first quarter she was approached by an officer from the Logan Police Department because she was not wearing a #mask. pic.twitter.com/uhuy7sQmOv

— Dottie_Dots (@dots_dottie) September 24, 2020

"They didn't feel they needed to wear masks because it was stupid, because they were outside. They all live together. They're not near anybody," he said of Kitts and her family.

"Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people. And that is you," he said as a stone-faced Fauci stared ahead. "Your advice to communities like that, to idiotic politicians who enforce those rules, arrested that mom for watching a football game with her own family outside."

Noting Kitts' story convinced him to pursue a political career six years ago, Moreno added: "Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, 'Who the f— do you think you were for doing that?' It is a total disgrace what you did to this country."

He also condemned his Democratic colleagues who continue to defend Fauci, adding that the doctor's actions are indefensible and that his 50-year career in public service is ending "in total and complete disgrace." Fauci also pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to Moreno's opportunity to apologize to the people who were harmed by his recommendations.