“Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it,” Johnson told “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade.

“He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population when it couldn’t. And he’s doing, he’s using the exact same playbook with COVID, ignoring therapy, pushing a vaccine,” the senator said, receiving no pushback from the host.

More than 700,000 people in the United States have died from illness related to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since it first began spreading. Contrary to the senator’s claim, any person can develop AIDS if they contract HIV through certain bodily fluids of an infected person and leave it untreated. (HIV cannot be transmitted through kissing or sharing food.)

Government officials, including Fauci, were criticized by LGBTQ activists at the time for failing to take the threat of AIDS seriously, and failing to act swiftly to prevent its spread. Eventually, though, Fauci became instrumental in American research efforts to treat HIV, which was particularly detrimental to LGBTQ communities in the 1980s and 1990s.