How Does Joe Biden Really Feel About Dr. Fauci?

While a large percentage of the United States population fell a little in love with Dr. Anthony Fauci over the course of the pandemic in 2020, that isn't true of the whole country. A large number of conservatives and Donald Trump supporters see the scientist, who often contradicted the former president in press briefings, as something of an enemy.

President Joe Biden has always expressed support for Dr. Fauci, but after The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News obtained and published a trove of the doctor's 2020 emails, there are those who wonder if that support has waned at all. One of the issues mentioned in the emails is the theory that coronavirus was "engineered" in a lab in Wuhan, China, per The Wall Street Journal. The political right is particularly interested in this, according to the BBC, as they claim that Dr. Fauci was burying evidence that COVID-19 was, in fact, created in a lab. The counterargument is that the emails show Dr. Fauci considering the theory and then concluding there was no evidence to support it. Conservative commentators have pointed to other emails claiming wrongdoing, all of which are pretty open to interpretation and not quite the "smoking gun" some seem to think, as outlined by The Washington Post.

But more importantly than what talking heads on the news think — has any of this changed President Joe Biden's mind?

President Biden summed up his feelings on Dr. Anthony Fauci in a single sentence on Friday, June 4. "Yes, I'm very confident in Dr. Fauci," he told reporters. For what it's worth, the Biden administration has ordered an official investigation into the lab leak theory, so it's not completely out of the left field to wonder if the president had lost faith in Fauci due to his emails.

From what we can tell, Biden and his administration have been pretty consistent about the doctor and his work. In a White House press briefing, the day before, via The Hill, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters, "The president and the administration feel that Dr. Fauci has played an incredible role in getting the pandemic under control, being a voice to the public throughout the course of this pandemic."

In any case, it seems pretty doubtful that Dr. Fauci is going anywhere just yet.