‘I’m over Dr. Fauci’: ‘The View’ host Meghan McCain rips vaccine rollout

Meghan McCain really wants a COVID-19 vaccine, and on Monday she directed her impatience and frustration at Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading epidemiologist, who became the unlucky subject of her latest tirade.

As “The View” panelists appeared virtually to discuss how the U.S. reached half a million COVID-19 deaths, the daughter of late Sen. John McCain used a clip of Fauci on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend to make her point about the nation’s uneven vaccine rollout.

She called out the doctor for not giving concrete advice to vaccinated grandparents about visiting their unvaccinated grandchildren.

“There will be recommendations coming out. I don’t want to be making a recommendation now on public TV,” Fauci said. “I would want to sit down with the team [and] take a look at that.”

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The quote was on brand for Fauci, who’s often reluctant to speculate until he has sound evidence and data to back up his claims. McCain wanted something more substantial, though, and began making her point by saying that she wasn’t trying to downplay the pandemic, nor the grief of those who’ve lost loved ones.

Still, she was “very frustrated” when she saw the clip of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, who’s been criticized for not being very optimistic.

“Next week it will be a year since we left the studio, and I have been very responsible in many different ways, as so many Americans have been,” the show’s resident conservative said. “And the fact that Dr. Fauci is going on CNN and he can’t tell me that if I get the vaccine, if I’ll be able to have dinner with my family... It’s terribly inconsistent messaging, and it continues to be inconsistent messaging.”

She then cited Israel’s “Get a shot, take a shot” messaging and unapologetically flexed her privilege on national television.

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“The fact that I, Meghan McCain, co-host of ‘The View,’ I 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 can get it,” the 36-year-old cohost said. “I want to get it. If you call me at 3 o’clock in the morning, I will go any place at any time to get it.

“So I’m over Dr. Fauci,” McCain said. “I think we need to have more people giving more opinions and honestly quite frankly, I think the Biden administration should remove him and put someone in place that maybe does understand science or can talk like these other countries about how we can be more like these other places that are doing this successfully.” (Earlier on Monday, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro also called on Fauci to be fired.)

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When cohost Whoopi Goldberg returned on screen, she tempered McCain’s argument by explaining that vaccination campaigns are working better in Israel because it had a “completely different rollout,” plus it’s a smaller country and didn’t have as many issues with people not wearing masks like the U.S. does.

Meanwhile, Fauci was resilient through the Trump administration and has become something of a national treasure during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for combating misinformation set forth by the former president.

McCain’s rant didn’t go unnoticed, with CNN host Chris Cuomo flagging her self-important video clip on Twitter and defending Fauci in another tweet.

But McCain pounced on the host for his own scandal — one that involves his media coverage of his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who became a celebrity type last spring with his daily coronavirus briefings. The brothers were blasted last week after Gov. Cuomo came under fire for failing to disclose the true number of COVID-related nursing-home deaths in his state.

Chris Cuomo never brought up those numbers nor the alleged cover-up on “Cuomo Primetime,” even when the Democratic politician appeared repeatedly as a guest.

“You and your ghoul of a brother were doing comedy shows with giant q tips and joking about his sex life while covering the number of nursing home deaths in nyc,” McCain tweeted Monday in response. “Why doesn’t your brother finally apologize to @JaniceDean and the other family members he helped to kill?”

Chris Cuomo didn’t directly respond to her missive, but defended Fauci in a separate tweet.

In the wake of last week’s scandal, CNN reinstated its ban of Chris Cuomo interviewing or doing stories about his brother after temporarily lifting that ban last spring. The elder Cuomo appeared on “Cuomo Primetime” nine times between March 19 and June 24, 2020.