“I have nothing to do with the border,” the White House chief medical adviser said, adding that he acknowledged there is a “very difficult situation at the border” that Biden administration officials are “trying as best as they can” to solve.

Fauci also rejected Graham’s suggestion to go down to the border: “Having me down at the border, that’s really not what I do,” he said.

In the same interview, Fauci addressed attacks by other Republican figures — such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — saying that he found the criticisms “a little bizarre” and suggesting that he had become a sort of scapegoat for Republicans.

“I’ve become sort of, for some reason or another, a symbol of anything they don’t like” related to anything “contrary to them or outside of their own realm,” he said.