TODAY’S TALKER

Donuts that feature Dr. Fauci’s face selling like, well, hotcakes

Nick Semeraro decided that he wanted to find a way to honor Anthony Fauci. As the owner of a small doughnut shop in Rochester, New York, he had been closely tracking the latest news about the coronavirus pandemic.

And night after night, he’d been impressed by how Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, approached the crisis in a calm, knowledgeable manner.

So, as a tribute, Semeraro put the renowned immunologist’s face on a doughnut. Expecting to sell a few hundred, he was shocked when the store sold out day after day, with thousands flying off the shelves.

Donuts Delite was besieged with requests to ship the butter creamfrosted creations all over the country, and one Fauci fan drove three hours just to pick up a dozen. Soon, bakeries in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania followed suit, using edible paper to decorate pastries with Fauci’s likeness.

“We had no idea it was going to blow up this big,” Semeraro said. “We didn’t know everyone else felt the same way we did.”

While Fauci was already a respected scientist before the outbreak, his appearances during White House press briefings have made him a household name and an unlikely celebrity.

With his straightforward demeanor and willingness to contradict President Donald Trump, he’s begun to develop the same kind of cult following as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former special counsel Robert Mueller, who inspired countless “Plank like RBG” tank tops and a bizarre illustrated children’s book, respectively.