Aaron Rodgers’ HIV/AIDS Comments Spark Backlash

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers went viral on Tuesday over a video in which he appeared to suggest that Dr. Anthony Fauci and the U.S. government engaged in corruption while combating the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became a household name during the coronavirus pandemic under the Trump/Biden administrations, has been criticized for his handling of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, which killed over 100,000 people in a decade. Rodgers seemed to suggest on the Look Into It podcast that perhaps Fauci and the U.S. government were combating these issues with ulterior motives.

“The blueprint, the game plan, was made in the 80s. Create a pandemic with a virus that’s going wild,” he said. “Fauci was given over $350 million to research this, to come up with drugs, new or repurposed to handle the AIDS pandemic. And all they came up with was AZT.”

“And if you do even a smidge of research — and I know, I’m not an epidemiologist, I’m not a doctor, I’m not an immunologist, whatever – I can read, though. And I can learn and look things up just like any normal person. I can do my own research, which is so vilified, to even question authority,” he added.

Rodgers further accused Fauci of having a “stake in the Moderna vaccine,” though no evidence has been presented to support that claim.

“And we know Pfizer is one of the most criminally corrupt organizations ever,” Rodgers said. “The fine they paid was the biggest in the history of the DOJ [Department of Justice] in 2009. Like, what are we talking about? We’re going to put our full trust in science that can’t be questioned.”

Reaction from Z users flowed in.

Still, not everyone was critical.

As noted by the Daily Mail, Fauci’s critics have claimed that a majority of AIDS patients died from a medication being administered at the time as opposed to the actual virus. No evidence supports that claim.

“While it’s true that Fauci had been a leading researcher when AIDS emerged in the 1980s, the claims that azidothymidine, commonly known as AZT, killed more people than the virus itself are baseless,” noted the Mail.

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.