Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly paid government bureaucrat who's been advising Joe Biden on COVID-19 actions, not only has flip-flopped on issues including the use of masks and denied U.S. involvement in "gain-of-function" work, he's also literally dictated their lives to Americans with his opinions about the obviously still undefeated virus.

The result has been predictable.

The New York Post reported in July that a poll showed "trust in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, has declined."

Back then only about two-thirds of Americans said they were "confident" of his advice.

The next month, the Wall Street Journal commentary warned that Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control had undermined the trust of the public by "vacillating between contradictory positions."

"This pattern extends to the earliest days of the pandemic. Far from providing leadership, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and figures such as Anthony Fauci have a record of projecting their own unfounded speculation as authoritative scientific judgments on matters in which they lack clear evidence. Recall how the CDC spent spring 2020 attempting to dissuade the public from buying masks, how Dr. Fauci described the risk of Covid to the U.S. as 'minuscule' in late February 2020, and how 'two weeks to flatten the curve' morphed into two months, then a year," it pointed out.

Then in September, a poll cited by Statnews warned the public trust in Fauci was "evaporating."

That revealed the "U.S. government’s chaotic response to the coronavirus pandemic," the report said. "The U.S. public’s overall trust in Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s top infectious disease doctor, has declined 10% since April. Republicans have particularly soured on him: His favorables dropped nearly 30% among Republicans since April."

Now it appears that it's more or less open warfare between Fauci, who laughs at those who have concerns about his reliability, and members of U.S. Congress, who suggest he should be investigated for – and jailed for – lying to Congress.

Even some in the media aren't trusting Fauci.

The Washington Examiner noted that Fox news host Tucker Carlson unleashed his criticism of Fauci.

"After saying that 81-year-old Fauci 'really shouldn't be driving a car,' Carlson said the Italian American went insane after taking over the 'most powerful country on Earth,'" the report said.

"After two years of nonstop media adulation, Tony Fauci has morphed into an even shorter version of Benito Mussolini," Carlson said.

The latest exchanges were prompted by Fauci's claim, again, that he is "science," against which no criticism apparently can stand.

Fauci said on Sunday, "I'm just gonna do my job. If they get up and criticize science, nobody is gonna know what they're talking about, but if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people can recognize there is a person there. So it's easy to criticize."

The report also pointed out commentator Lara Logan went even further, with, "What you see on Dr. Fauci — this is what people say to me, that he doesn't represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele — Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps."

Newsweek, reported that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called Fauci the "most dangerous bureaucrat" in American history.

He charged that there's unresolved conflict between the words of Fauci and the words of the CDC.

Crus said, "(1) On May 11, Fauci testified before a Senate Committee that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (2) On October 20, NIH wrote they funded an experiment at the Wuhan lab testing if "spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model." That is gain of function research. (3) Fauci’s statement and the NIH’s October 20 letter cannot both be true. The statements are directly contradictory. (4) 18 USC 1001 makes it felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison, to lie to Congress. No amount of ad hominem insults parroting Democrat talking points will get Fauci out of this contradiction. Fauci either needs to address the substance—in detail, with specific factual corroboration—or DOJ should consider prosecuting him for making false statements to Congress."

It was Cruz' concerns about false statements to Congress that prompted Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to "just laugh" at him.

Cruz said, "He talks, a moment ago ... about hurting science but I don't think anyone has hurt science, has hurt the credibility of the CDC, has hurt the credibility of doctors more than Dr. Fauci because throughout this pandemic, he's been dishonest, he's been political, he's been partisan."

Cruz accused Fauci of using the Beavis and Butt-Head" defense by screaming "liars" at everything.

Fauci has consistently denied supporting "gain-of-function" work, which makes viruses more dangerous. But in fact, in October, Lawrence Tabak, the NIH's principal deputy director, wrote in a letter to Representative James Comer that a "limited experiment" carried out by EcoHealth Alliance in a Wuhan lab had tested whether "spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model."

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also has been critical of Fauci, and this week released a statement accusing Fauci of lying "from the very beginning."

"He lied about masks. He lied about funding gain of function research. Now, he's lying about ME," he wrote.

He cited Fauci's claim to "represent science."

"The absolute hubris is almost too much to take - and it's yet another reason it's time to show Fauci the door," he wrote.

WND reported in June when Fauci told television host Chuck Todd the attacks on him, "quite frankly are attacks on science."

"Because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people, and there was pushback against me," he said. "So if you are trying to get at me as a public health official and scientist, you’re really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you are attacking science. And anybody that looks at what is going on clearly sees that. You have to be asleep not to see that."

That interview:

Bck then, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., had had enough, saying Fauci needs "to cut the crap." and produce evidence to back his stances.

He said, "I like Dr. Fauci. I respect Dr. Fauci. But Dr. Fauci needs to cut the crap. This isn't about Dr. Fauci. It's not about his feelings. And I'm sorry if his feelings were hurt. You know, maybe he ought to buy an emotional support pony."

See the interview with Sen. Kennedy: