Six years ago, Meghan McCain called Anthony Fauci a genius.
Last week, she called for him to be put in handcuffs.
That shift matters — because McCain built her reputation as one of the Republicans willing to stand up for Fauci when her own party came after him. In April 2020, as conservatives questioned whether he was a political puppet of the left, she shut it down. "Dr. Fauci is a genius who has helped this country through the AIDS epidemic, Ebola, and COVID, just to name a few," she wrote on X. "The implication he's some kind of bobblehead, puppet is beyond insulting to him and his career."
She spent 2021 urging her audience to get vaccinated. She pushed back hard on anyone who questioned the shots.
She also had two miscarriages in the years that followed — one in 2022, one in 2024.
Then she read Fauci's private text messages. Her position changed.
"PUT FAUCI IN JAIL!!!!" she posted on X. "I am a woman who was pregnant and had a miscarriage during Covid."
She wasn't done: "This is not hyperbole — handcuff, perp walk and put Fauci in a jail cell for the rest of his life."
Here is what triggered it.
In January 2021 — as the vaccine rollout was underway and pregnant women were being actively encouraged to get the shot — Fauci sent a text to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and future Surgeon General Vivek Murthy flagging a concern he hadn't raised publicly.
He had a concern.
"Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose," Fauci wrote, "this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester."
Walensky and Murthy told him it was a good point.
Then all three of them went silent.
Fauci kept going on television. "It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated," he told the public — in briefings, in interviews, on network after network. The concern he had put in writing to the country's top public health officials never made it into any of those appearances. The texts sat on his government phone for five years, buried among more than 34,000 messages and 522 voicemails. Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul pulled them out and released them on August 10, 2026.
McCain is not the only one asking hard questions.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman went public with a number: seven. His wife suffered seven miscarriages during the COVID vaccination period. He is calling for a complete accounting — what officials knew, when they knew it, and what they decided the public didn't need to hear.
Fauci's defenders will reach for the word "theoretically." The text raised a question, they'll argue — a theoretical concern, not proof of anything. Fine. He raised it with the CDC director and the incoming Surgeon General. He chose not to raise it with the pregnant women he was sending to get the shot.
The officials running American public health in 2021 told the public one thing and wrote something different to each other in private. One of those conversations aired on national television. The other sat locked on a government phone.
Your government made that choice. Now you know about it.