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NFL Coach Gets Laughs With Fauci Fifth Amendment Joke

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Philadelphia Eagles
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Vic Fangio walked into an Eagles press conference and turned Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Senate silence into the week’s most unexpected NFL punchline.

The question that set him off was ordinary football housekeeping. A reporter wanted to know where Marcus Epps stood in the starting safety picture, but the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator reached instead for the political shorthand everyone in the room seemed to understand.

“I’m gonna be like Fauci and just take the Fifth Amendment on all questions,” Fangio cracked.

Fangio grinned and shook his head before moving on.

“Did you guys see that? Oh my god,” Fangio continued.

By the time Fangio got to the microphone, the number hanging over Fauci’s Capitol Hill appearance was 111.

That was how many times the former chief medical adviser pleaded the Fifth during his Wednesday testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as Republicans pressed him over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inside the hearing room, the two parties treated Fauci like two different witnesses. Republicans attacked. Democrats largely defended the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and ripped the proceedings as overtly partisan.

The Fauci bit came back later when the room turned to Brandon Graham.

The discussion had moved to Brandon Graham and whether he could be brought back while outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard deals with a pectoral strain.

Fangio told a reporter that Eagles general manager Howie Roseman should have gotten that question the day before.

The reporter said he had asked. “And what he’d say? He ducked you? He Faucied you?” Fangio joked, drawing laughs from the press.

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By then, Fauci’s Senate appearance had already become shorthand for dodging a question.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the panel, left the hearing preparing a more formal response, saying he would push next week for a committee vote on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress.

Paul pointed to the preemptive pardon Fauci received from former President Biden in January 2025 as the reason the Fifth Amendment claim should not have carried the day.

“We believe that with his … immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place,” Paul argued to reporters.

The legal shield at issue covered potential federal offenses from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Fauci’s refusal to answer, however, could still leave him exposed to a Senate contempt vote.

On NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made clear he did not view Fauci’s silence as dignity or restraint.

“I hate to say this about an 85-year-old man who was in public service for 35 years, but Dr. Fauci is a weasel,” O’Reilly said. “The reason I say that is because he’s purely a swamp creature, purely somebody who uses his position to try to advance himself.”

O’Reilly argued Fauci’s lawyers had boxed him into repeating the same answer for three hours so Republicans would not get material that could lead to additional legal trouble.

“The instructions were, look, you got the blanket pardon from President Biden. If you go away from that, if you deviate out of the Fifth, they can make it a lot easier to bring you in on a contempt of Congress and other charges,” O’Reilly said. “So no matter what they do, you just say Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican, pushed the scene toward absurdity by asking questions that had nothing to do with pandemic policy.

“What day of the week is it today?” Hawley asked Fauci.

Hawley also moved from the calendar to Fauci’s immediate surroundings. “What color tie are you wearing? What color is the carpet in front of you?”

Fauci did not break from the line he was using.

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” he repeated after each question.

O’Reilly said the carpet question appeared to get through.

“He actually did look at the carpet when Hawley asked him about the carpet,” O’Reilly said.

Fauci’s defenders treated the hearing as an attack, not a joke.

On “Watch What Happens Live,” Bravo host Andy Cohen framed the Republican questioning as a “war on science,” gave Fauci his “Mazel of the Day” and praised his decades of public service.

Cohen said senators had grilled, berated and sworn at Fauci over “imaginary crimes” tied to his management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cohen also suggested politicians were jealous because doctors and scientists can fix things in a way lawmakers cannot.

TMZ producer Harvey Levin also defended Fauci, though he acknowledged problems with the way the CDC handled COVID.

“Watching Anthony Fauci before a congressional hearing and taking the Fifth Amendment is just one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government in my lifetime. This is something we need to reckon with, that I’m going to say up front, I have problems the way the CDC handled COVID,” Levin said on TMZ.

Levin reserved his harshest criticism for Congress and Paul.

“Now we are at a point where members of congress and yes, you Rand Paul, are on a witch hunt. The best I can say for Rand Paul is that he’s being really honest. He has said now over a period of years he wants Anthony Fauci in a jail cell… that’s the point of this hearing,” he claimed.

Levin argued the hearing was meant to tee up a prosecution, conviction and prison sentence by turning Fauci’s testimony into a possible perjury case.

“That’s why they’re doing this. They want to take something Anthony Fauci says and claim it amounts to perjury, and they want to prosecute him, they want to convict him, and they want to throw him in prison. That’s the point of this hearing. There is no other point of this hearing.”

Levin claimed that any answer Fauci gave could be turned against him.

“If you can prosecute somebody for fricking seashells on the beach shore, then you could certainly prosecute somebody for what they say in a congressional hearing, and that’s the climate we’re in. We are in a Senator Joseph McCarthy climate.”

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