Trump Gives a Surprising Response to Fauci Pleading the 5th 111 Times [WATCH]

President Trump weighed in Wednesday after Dr. Anthony Fauci delivered a spectacle on Capitol Hill that looked less like accountability and more like a master class in self preservation.

Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where Senate Republicans pressed him over the COVID pandemic, his shifting claims, and the long list of statements Americans were told to accept without question.

Instead of clearing the air, Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right 111 times.

That is quite a performance from the man the left spent years treating like a lab coat version of Mount Rushmore.

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Senator Rand Paul announced that the committee is expected to vote next week on holding Fauci in contempt.

Paul also suggested Fauci’s repeated refusal to answer may not have been legally proper under the circumstances.

Trump was asked at the White House whether Fauci should be held in contempt.

He did not directly call for punishment, but he made clear he remembers exactly what dealing with Fauci was like.

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“Well, I watched the whole thing today, but more importantly, I was a part of the whole Fauci. I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s, so I had him for a period of time, and I disagreed with him on a lot,” Trump said.

Trump added that “I would have had to close down the whole country if I listened to him.”

That line alone captures the divide between the bureaucratic panic machine and the Americans who still had bills to pay.

“I went the Federalist way, which is basically let the governors decide, and generally speaking, the Republican governors did very well.

The Democrat governors did not very well,” Trump continued.

The president also reminded the press that Fauci’s guidance was anything but steady.

One day masks were unnecessary, then came the era where the public health crowd seemed ready to wrap everyone in cloth from head to toe.

“But Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as you could get. I mean, made a lot of mistakes, and he wasn’t a big factor for me. He was a very big factor for Biden, and if you remember, even though we were sort of prime time in terms of that whole disaster of COVID, far people died fewer in the Trump administration than in the Biden administration.”

Then came the wrinkle that had conservatives raising eyebrows.

Lindell TV’s Cara Castronuova asked Trump whether the Justice Department should revisit Joe Biden’s auto pen pardons and challenge whether they were legitimate.

Trump, who previously declared documents, executive orders, and contracts signed by Biden’s auto pen to be “null, void, and of no further force or effect,” sounded far more cautious this time.

He described the pardon power as “the most powerful thing a president has.”

“So, he was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that. I know how powerful it is,” Trump said.

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That answer landed with a thud among those who want a full accounting of the COVID years.

If Biden’s auto pen operation deserves scrutiny, Fauci’s pardon would seem like one of the first places to start looking.

Trump did leave the door open slightly, noting there may be questions about whether the person operating the auto pen knew what was being approved.

“Maybe there’s something on the auto pen. Other than that, the power of pardon is very powerful.”

Later, Trump was asked why Fauci refused to answer questions even though he had a pardon.

His answer was simple, and it pointed right at the legal choreography surrounding the hearing.

“Look, I’ve never been a big fan of Fauci. Why he did that was very simple. His lawyer told him to,” Trump said.

“I don’t know if he would have been better off not doing it. There were a lot of questions that I guess he could have answered, and some maybe he didn’t feel comfortable answering, but his lawyer told him to do that.”

For millions of Americans, that will not be good enough.

They remember the mandates, the school closures, the censored doctors, and the smug lectures from the same expert class that now suddenly discovers silence when accountability comes calling.

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