Smoke and mirrors

Lawfare on display

I guess Steve and I have both had a busy week, but I wanted to say a quick word about the Fauci hearing yesterday. The internet is blowing up over this, with some claiming that the doctor’s diary shows pandemic concerns were overblown and others blaming Fauci himself for creating a bio weapon that killed millions. Both claims can’t be true and neither is.

The Fauci hearing was lawfare in its most basic form with Republicans using their position, not to investigate the government’s actions in the pandemic, but to attempt to find something - anything - to use to prosecute the scientist. When it was obvious that wouldn’t work, they chose to humiliate him.

Image by ChatGPT

In context, Fauci’s diary entries don’t say what Republicans say they do. By definition, a diary is a stream of thought, written as events unfold. That Fauci’s view of the virus and unfolding pandemic changed over time should not be surprising. This was a brand new bug that we knew nothing about.

This was a brand new bug that ended up killing more than a million Americans. It went on until the vaccines stopped the outbreak. Ivermectin didn’t end the pandemic. Neither did hydroxychloroquine. Both those drugs were proven ineffective.

There is no firm evidence to prove the lab leak theory, but if a dangerous virus did escape from Wuhan, wouldn’t that mean that strict protocols were necessary? If the lab leak theory is correct, then so was Fauci.

Fauci had no authority on his own. He could only make recommendations to the president and state governors. Without a doubt, not all of those recommendations were correct, but in the context of a pandemic caused by a novel virus, they are justifiable.

Voters should ask themselves, why now, five years after the pandemic and two months before the midterms, is Fauci being pilloried? I think there are multiple answers to that question, beginning with the fact that Republican approval is plummeting. Republicans are losing a war with Iran, tariffs and oil prices (from the war) are dragging down the economy with higher prices, Americans are being harassed and detained because they look foreign, and corruption is rampant. Oh, and the Epstein files still have not been released after 556 days.

The hearing was also an attempt to rehabilitate Trump, just as the president has been relitigating the 2020 election. Trump’s handling of COVID played a major role in his loss. Fauci’s diary records that Trump repeatedly asked him to say positive and untrue things to help his reelection campaign, and that Trump was unconcerned about the pandemic.

Along the same lines, with anti-vax sentiment high in the GOP, Republicans want to distance Trump from Operation Warp Speed. Ironically, the effort to rapidly produce a vaccine was the best and most effective policy of the first Trump term, and now Republicans are running away from it.

Most Republican politicians, including Trump, got vaccinated while many told their constituents not to. The result was a clear partisan divide in the COVID death toll in which Republicans died at a higher rate than Democrats. Republican resistance to the vaccines and safety measures is the clear explanation.

Finally, I’ve always thought that Fauci’s original sin was being more popular than Trump. The calm, competent doctor inspired confidence during the dark days of the pandemic while Trump rambled about injecting disinfectant. Fauci had to be co-opted or destroyed.

I’ll add here that Fauci’s reflections on his newfound fame are unseemly, but not criminal. If the truth were told, I think most of us, if thrust into the spotlight, would be similarly awed and overwhelmed.

Republicans can’t run on their record so they are running on distractions. Perennial Republican accusations of socialism have been ramped up to communism, and while it’s true that the Democratic Socialists present a problem for the Democrats, but they are still a minority of the party.

The truth is evident when you look at who is attacking Fauci. It’s the Republican politicians and grifters, not doctors and medical experts. Healthcare people know that, as bad as the pandemic was, it could have been worse.

Dr. Fauci isn’t perfect. He made mistakes, but history will remember him for his effectiveness in fighting the virus. The current attempt to rewrite history is both shameful and disturbing. I’d go so far as to say that such actions are straight out of the communist playbook.

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