For those watching the melodrama of Senate hearings these days, the big update is that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now playing the role of victim. And, in a way, I did (slightly) sympathize with him, but not because of anything Senator Rand Paul said or did.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Fauci, the head of NIAID, accused Senator Paul of endangering his life. “You keep coming back to personal attacks on me that have absolutely no relevance to reality,” Fauci said. He charged Paul with “distorting everything about” him and noted, “I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.”

Fauci also cited an incident on December 21 in which a man traveling with an AR-15 from Sacramento toward Washington, D.C., was arrested and said he had planned to kill Dr. Fauci, among others. Fauci had said that Paul’s attacks on him stirred up “crazies.”

As evidence for this very emotive charge, Fauci cited a banner on Rand Paul’s website that said “Fire Fauci” with an encouragement to donate to the senator. He charged Paul with using a “catastrophic epidemic” for “political gain.”