ESPN personality and Sirius XM host Stephen A. Smith delivered a raw and emotional rebuke of Dr. Anthony Fauci this week, revealing publicly for the first time just how close he came to dying from COVID-19 despite doing everything the nation’s top pandemic health official told Americans to do. The outspoken commentator, long known for his fiery sports commentary, showed a strikingly different side of himself as he described feeling betrayed by the guidance that shaped years of American life.
Smith explained that he took three COVID vaccine doses, including a booster, and faithfully wore a mask exactly as Fauci instructed the public to do throughout the pandemic. Despite following that guidance to the letter, Smith says he still contracted COVID-19, and not in a mild way. He says the virus nearly killed him.
“We were told, hey, you ain’t gonna get COVID if you do that. And I got COVID,” Smith said, his voice rising with visible frustration. “And damn it, it almost killed me.”
According to Smith’s account, he ended up in the hospital as 2022 was about to begin, fighting double pneumonia roughly ninety minutes before the ball was set to drop on New Year’s Eve. He said a doctor delivered a chilling warning after weeks of treatment had failed to turn the tide. The physician told him that if a course of antibiotics and steroids did not work, the hospital would have to call his family, because things looked that serious.
“And through the grace of God, three hours later, I felt better after they gave me that steroid and that antibiotic,” Smith recalled. “But those were the longest three hours of my life because I thought it was over.”
What made the moment especially bitter for Smith was the realization that he had done exactly what he was told to do. He had gotten vaccinated, gotten boosted and worn his mask, all based on assurances from Fauci and the broader public health establishment that these measures would keep him safe. Instead, he found himself fighting for his life anyway.
The revelation marks a striking reversal for Smith, who in 2022 publicly credited the vaccine with saving his life. Years later, with new information and Fauci’s own conduct under fresh scrutiny, Smith appears to view that chapter of the pandemic very differently.
Smith did not stop at recounting his personal ordeal. He turned his frustration directly on Fauci, questioning whether the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director should feel any shame for what Smith described as self congratulatory behavior throughout the pandemic. “Do I think that he should be embarrassed for the self adulation that he engaged in? You’re damn right I do,” Smith said bluntly.
He went further, arguing that many of the mandates imposed on ordinary Americans, and on businesses forced to enforce them, were sold to the public as settled science when they were nothing of the sort. “Because some of the things that he was telling us to do were inconsistent with science, but he was telling us it was science that led to him making the decisions that he made,” Smith said.
Smith specifically called out the masking guidance that dominated daily American life for years, saying Fauci was “damn near encouraging us to wear two, three masks at a time” to the point that people could barely breathe. He also revisited the widely enforced six foot social distancing rule, noting that Fauci himself later admitted the guidance was not actually grounded in scientific evidence.
“He later admitted that it wasn’t backed by science,” Smith said. “He’s just coming up with this stuff.” Smith pressed further, asking pointedly where such specific and consequential guidance had even come from if it was not rooted in data, given how dramatically it reshaped everyday life for millions of Americans, their businesses and their children’s education.
Smith’s comments arrived in the immediate aftermath of Fauci’s contentious appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29, where the retired official invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination well over one hundred times rather than answer lawmakers’ questions.
That performance, following years in which Fauci said he welcomed congressional scrutiny because he had nothing to hide, struck Smith as a stunning reversal.
Smith did not let that contradiction pass without comment, playing a clip on his program from 2022 in which Fauci said he was “very happy” to testify before Congress precisely because he had nothing to hide. The contrast with Fauci’s recent silence on the stand, Smith argued, spoke for itself.
Smith also broadened his critique beyond masking and vaccines to include the broader package of pandemic era policies, including business lockdowns, restrictions on natural immunity considerations and repeated assurances that the vaccines would prevent infection and transmission, claims that did not hold up as the virus continued to spread among the vaccinated.
In a further sign of reflection, Smith used the moment to revisit his past criticism of athletes who refused the vaccine. He specifically apologized to NBA star Kyrie Irving, whom Smith had previously called selfish for declining the shot and facing exclusion from home games under New York City’s vaccine mandate. Smith said that in hindsight, Irving’s willingness to stand his ground did not make him selfish, but rather made him brave.
That apology did not go unnoticed in sports and political circles. Former NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has been an outspoken critic of Fauci and pandemic era mandates himself, publicly praised Smith for owning his previous stance rather than dodging accountability, saying it took real courage for a prominent media figure to admit he had been wrong.
Smith’s remarks add a notable and unexpected voice to the growing chorus of skepticism surrounding Fauci’s legacy, particularly given Smith’s stature as one of the most recognized sports commentators in America and someone who does not typically wade deeply into partisan political territory.
His willingness to speak candidly about his own near death experience, and to hold Fauci accountable for guidance that did not protect him despite full compliance, lends a personal and human dimension to a debate that has often played out in purely political terms.
