Heather Cox Richardson had a good piece yesterday on the Rand Paul vs Dr. Fauci congressional hearing. I copied part of it below, and have some comments of my own at the end:
July 29, 2026 (Wednesday)
"And so, Republicans are devoting themselves to serving red meat to their MAGA base, ginning up sound bites for distribution on social media. "
"On the menu today was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 85-year-old former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who, serving in that capacity for 38 years, advised seven different presidents of both parties. President George W. Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in creating the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved an estimated 26 million lives. Trump named Fauci to the President’s Coronavirus Task Force in January 2020. "
"But, as Savannah Behrmann and Jeanine Santucci of USA Today reported in October 2020, Trump turned on Fauci as he cautioned against Trump’s confident predictions that the disease would disappear quickly. By February 28, Trump insisted that Democrats were “politicizing” covid, and by April 26, news broke that Trump wanted to sideline Fauci, although Fauci was considered trustworthy and viewed favorably by a 3:1 margin. "
"By the summer, as Trump’s panic over how the economic crisis caused by the pandemic might hurt his reelection prospects, he turned on Fauci, who continued to support measures to stop the spread of the disease. Trump worked to undermine Fauci’s warnings, saying that the doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “lying” about covid. "
"By July, he mused about why Fauci had a high approval rating and he didn’t. When Fauci testified to Congress that U.S. cases were spiking while European countries were seeing sharp drops in covid cases because European countries had shut down 95% of their economies while the U.S. had shut down only 50%, Trump posted: “Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country…. If we tested less, there would be less cases.”
"As Trump continued to criticize Fauci and yet ran a campaign ad suggesting Fauci endorsed his reelection, the doctor continued to emphasize that he was “not a political person.” He added: “And I have never—either directly or indirectly—endorsed a political candidate.” In October he dismissed Trump’s attacks, saying: “They don't bother me. I know what my job is, and I’ve gotta do it and I'm going to do it. So that kind of—whatever you want to call it—is to me, I just, it’s noise.”
"As Aaron Rupar reminded us today, Trump himself awarded a presidential commendation to Fauci “in recognition of [his] exceptional effort on Operation Warp Speed.”
"But with the arrival of a vaccine that helped to put the worst of the pandemic behind us, MAGA Republicans began to demonize Dr. Fauci not only as the source of the mask mandates and school shutdowns they hated, but also as the source of the virus itself, alleging—without evidence—that the disease had escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, for which the U.S. National Institutes of Health provided funding."
"After voters reelected Trump to the presidency in 2024, he and his loyalists vowed to prosecute Fauci. Trump ally Steve Bannon called for “rough Roman justice” for Fauci, as well as special counsel Jack Smith and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Before he left office, former president Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci—and others—to protect them from political prosecution, saying: “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
"But Republicans have continued to demonize Fauci, ginning up anger against him in their base even as the rest of the country has moved on. Now, with the political tides running so strongly against the Republicans before the 2026 midterm elections, they are clearly trying to rekindle the fury of the last presidential election. "
"As the Associated Press reported today, for years, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has accused Fauci of lying about the origins of covid, an accusation Fauci has called “preposterous” in testimony before Congress. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci’s arrest and imprisonment and, in 2023, published a book with Fauci on the cover, explicating what he called the “Great Covid Cover-Up.”
"The Trump administration has fed Paul’s crusade, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. searching for eight months to find Fauci’s private diary on government computers, then handing the files over to Paul and to Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). Neither Kennedy, Paul, nor Johnson told Fauci they had obtained his 1,000-page diary before they published it, in full, last week. "
"In July 2021, Fauci wrote in his diary that an analysis of the viruses used in the Wuhan lab “clearly indicate(s) that it is molecularly impossible for the viruses under the auspices of the NIH grant to have been manipulated into or evolved into” the covid virus. "
"Now chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Paul subpoenaed Fauci in June to appear before the committee. Unwillingly, as his lawyers noted Paul’s many statements calling for Fauci to be jailed, Fauci did so today. "
In an opening statement, Fauci said that he believed “the sole reason [Paul] is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something—anything—that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he said. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
'More than 100 times he did exactly that as Republicans berated him, calling him “a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” mocking him, and asking him, “Do you feel like you’re in deep sh*t?” What Republicans did not do is introduce any evidence that the 85-year-old lifelong public servant had broken any laws. "
That was from HCR, and this is from me. Just a suggestion, if you don't want something you wrote privately, such as journal entries, to end up in public, don't compose it on a government server. I realize that no one anymore, except maybe me, writes journal entries longhand in a physical journal. But everyone's home computer has Word on it, and the capability of saving files on the hard drive without having them on the cloud or online. Or you can save them on a flash drive. If you want something to stay private, it can be done. Just saying.
Having said that, I think Dr. Fauci is an admirable person, and as usual, Rand Paul is behaving like a word that rhymes with nick. The subject of presidential pardons is controversial, but I am glad that Biden pardoned Fauci (even though he didn't ask for it) before he left office, because something like this was predictable, given the MAGA mindset.
Rand Paul isn't MAGA, but he's convinced NIH-funded experiments were responsible for covid and that Fauci is covering it all up. After 6 years, he has no evidence that this actually happened anywhere but in his fevered brain, but he is going to beat that drum until his arm falls off.
ReplyDeleteNone of what he's doing furthers our understanding of covid or enhances our preparedness for another pandemic.
Meantime, Michigan has now had over 10,000 cases of cyclosporiasis. In a normal year, you get 50 cases here. RFK says it's under control, but nobody knows the source of the infection, and we're still getting more than 100 cases per day. WTF are we paying these people for? To promote peptides and low-testosterone injections to "maximize troop lethality," I guess.
If Rand Paul isn't MAGA, he is a conspiracy theorist.
DeleteThe cyclosporiasis outbreak is puzzling, and why aren't RFK and company doing more to get to the bottom of it? Unless DOGE fired all the actual experts. As I understand it, the organism comes from human fecal contamination. Why is there so much more of it now than before?
I'm not buying any salad greens right now. Using vegetables that can be cooked. Some friends have given me homegrown tomatoes and summer squash. I figure that is safe..
Michigan public health officials tracked the cyclosporiasis infections to Taco Bell. Taco Bell duly pulled its lettuce and identified Taylor Farms as its supplier. The CDC tested samples and found positive test.
DeleteThen Taylor Farms, which donated $1 million to Trump's PAC, visited the White House. Next day, CDC said the test was false positive. Taylor Farms voluntarily quit sourcing produce from Mexico whence the positive-false-positive lettuce was grown.
That's when RFK said everything was under control, and anyway nobody has died from it. No, they just have explosive diarrhea for a month or more. About 600 people have been hospitalized for dehydration.
People are still getting sick but at a slightly slower clip, mostly bc they're avoiding lettuce and cooking produce.
Sure, it's safe to eat your homegrown stuff. But that's not the point. We rely on the military to repel foreign invaders, and on public health officials to repel invasions of bad food. If Big Ag can buy off the watchdogs, I want my tax $$ back.
Your diary may be safe if you only save it to your computer. However, if you back the computer files up to the cloud, then it is not safe. All cloud data is actually stored on a computer somewhere, and it can be stolen not only by hacking but also by physically stealing the computer that holds that data. It has been done.
ReplyDeleteWhat a disgraceful spectacle that was yesterday.
ReplyDeleteApart from Paul, Fauci has been the focus of conservative (not just MAGA) anger because Fauci apparently lied to the public; and because he apparently was advising Democratic officials to shut down schools and areas of the economy that, in retrospect, didn't need to be shut down.
I guess the point of this waste-of-time exercise yesterday was to try to motivate currently-unmotivated conservative voters to go out and vote this November.
The only thing I have read that could be considered a lie by Fauci is that he didn't urge people to wear masks at first, because there weren't enough masks for medical people. Then they were urging people to wear masks, but only the high grade ones (worn properly) gave good protection against catching Covid. However even cloth ones gave some help against transmitting it if you might have been exposed.
DeleteI have felt that we needed to give ourselves some grace about the school and business closings. We didn't know at first that children were less vulnerable, but we did know that they could pass Covid to adults in their household. Maybe the business closings were an excess of caution, but we didn't know what we didn't know . Sometimes we are really bad about extending any grace to ourselves or others
Thank you, Katherine. I think that too many have perfect vision with hindsight and forget the ongoing confusion and real-time chaos when Covid started killing people. Erring on the safe side was the prudent course . More-than a million Americans died. Imagine how much worse it might have been, especially before the vaccine if there hadn’t been shutdowns. . This little group lost a member and he was being very careful because of his age and comorbidities. But he lived in Florida with few rules and one of the highest death rates in the country. My sister in laws brother died of COVID, and I know of others, relatives of friends, especially before the vaccine was available. I was grateful to be living in a community that took it seriously, where people masked and got vaccinated and followed social distancing rules. It really wasn’t that much of an imposition and did save lives. . A neighbor up the street whom I didn’t know, but sort of knew his wife from church, died because he refused to mask or get vaccinated. She did both. After he died, she sold the house and moved to be near her sister. But compliance was generally high around here, and deaths were relatively few.
DeleteI read somewhere that Fauci's so-called diary wasn't a personal diary, it was some sort of work journal, and that is why he stored it at work and updated it from his work computer.
ReplyDeleteJim, could you be specific? When did Fauci lie and what was the lie?
ReplyDeleteJust to make sure everyone is clear on this point: it has nothing to do with what Rand Paul has been chasing him about. Rand Paul has been trying to get him to admit that the US funded gain-of-function research at one of the Wuhan labs; and that it was this research project that unleashed COVID on the world. I'm not aware that there is any proof that Paul is right about US-funded research leading directly to the development of the Coronavirus.
DeleteSo what did Fauci say that was untrue? Here is one instance: he has been heavily criticized for this interview that appeared in the NY Times in Dec 2020. Here is the key passage:
"In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate [of people to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity] that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
"In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.
"Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.
"Asked about Dr. Fauci’s conclusions, prominent epidemiologists said that he might be proven right. The early range of 60 to 70 percent was almost undoubtedly too low, they said, and the virus is becoming more transmissible, so it will take greater herd immunity to stop it.
"Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.
"Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated.
“"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”
"“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” "
Is that a bald-faced lie, saying not-X is X? Perhaps not - or perhaps it is; if he didn't really believe the sicence supported his initial statements of 60-70%, then maybe those initial estimates were deliberate untruths. But whatever he beleived at the time he gave that initial guidance, his evolving recommendations consisted of "moving the goal posts" (the author's characterization, not mine) by basing his advice, not on established science, but based on what he thought the public was psychologically able to accept.
Sorry, in that previous comment, I neglected to provide the URL to that NY Times interview from which I quoted. The link is here (can't promise it's not behind a paywall):
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.html?utm_source=perplexity
Here is another set of circumstances on which Fauci has been called out for not being entirely truthful. It had to do with mask-wearing during the early days of the pandemic. The circumstances are a little complicated, but seem to be as follows:
Delete* In March 2020, as the pandemic itself was gearing up and many people were very anxious, Fauci said in a 60 minutes interview that mask-wearing wasn't necessary
* Some months later, he apparently admitted that he didn't actually believe those views he had shared in the 60 minutes interview; but he was concerned that, if the public panicked, they would snap up all the N95 masks and there would be a shortage for healthcare workers who absolutely needed the masks.
The situation is summarized, and Fauci's ethics are analyzed, in this Slate article from July 2021:
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-cdc-masks.html
The Slate authors call it a "noble lie", and perhaps that's a defensible characterization. The sub-head captures the ethical question: "Do we want public health officials to report facts and uncertainties transparently? Or do we want them to shape information to influence the public to take specific actions?"
It seems that the percent vaccination at which we could achieve herd immunity was always an educated guess, because there wasn't enough data. And complicating the picture was the fact that the virus was and is a moving target. It keeps morphing into new variations. The first version was more lethal; you were more likely to end up in the hospital or die. We had at least four or five vaccinations ( they were giving a two-part Moderna at first) , and didn't catch Covid until late 2022. But then we did catch it, in December of that year, after having had a booster in October. It felt like a case of the flu, and the antiviral Paxlovid was available then, which shortened the duration. I feel that the vaccines protected us from serious illness, but I'm not sure it is of much use to keep getting the shot yearly now, given the shape shifting proclivities of the virus.
DeleteDeborah Birx, who, with Fauci, was the face of the Trump administration's response to civid, weighed in on the question Slate raises as well as working w/ Fauci.
Deletehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/birx-fauci-hearing-covid-response/
Her book, "Silent Invasion," is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand what happened and improve pandemic preparedness (which Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, et al are not). It's on Evil Amazon Kindle for $2.99 this month for those who do not use their public libraries.
If I thought it would do any good, I would send a copy to everybody running to represent me in Congress and the Legislature this fall.
In dealing with a new pathogen gone pandemic, mistakes will be made and lessons learned. In this politicized climate, truth is harder to access. Any shortfall of the medical establishment is turned into a conspiracy theory. The enclosure of US medicine by big pharma is a legitimate reason for suspicion. If we could tone down the political haymaking, and posturing, perhaps we could get to the truth.
Delete" If we could tone down the political haymaking, and posturing, perhaps we could get to the truth."
DeleteI agree with that!
From an NPR article dated yesterday:
Delete."..virologists who study pandemic origins are much less divided than the U.S. intelligence community. They say there is "very convincing" data and "overwhelming evidence" pointing to an animal origin."
"In a report issued in June 2025, the World Health Organization stated: "the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host."
"That conclusion was based on three years of research by the 27 members of The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens."
Of course the US dropped out of WHO (too woke or something) so the conspiracy theorists probably aren't going to believe their studies
Yes, me, too.
DeletePublic policy mistakes were made because a) there is no centralized reporting mechanism from county to state to feds (thank you, GOP cuts), b) fed agencies were constantly fighting misinformation (thank you MAGA idiots), c) Trump was agitating for less testing because he said it made the situation look worse (thank you, GOP voters), and d) covid was not acting like the flu as CDC models had predicted (thank you presidents who have ignored problems with the CDC for decades).
These policies were shaped less by Evil Arrogant Dr Fauci than by hospitals getting flooded with patients and telling local officials that they were at the breaking point, and governors unable to find ventilators and PPE quickly. Detroit hospitals had freezer truck morgue going for awhile. Those pictures freaked out a lot of state officials. To prevent more infections and avoid a breakdown in hospital services state authorities shut stuff down.
These problems could/should be addressed.
Rand Paul is a libertarian and therefore a rabid ideological enemy of big government. Medical Defense, fighting against pathological entities inimical to humans, requires big government and cooperation with all countries in the world against this common enemy.. Neither jibes with libertarian philosophy. Fauci is a natural poster boy enemy of libertarian philosophy. Reagan mocked government helping anyone unless, of course, it was killing poor people somewhere in the world. We are all still living in the Reagan Era.
DeleteI've read somewhere that public health officials like Fauci are trained to reduce public health risks, down to zero if possible. That is kind of the whole point of their profession.
DeleteThus, people who have little or no risk tolerance, and are willing to impose a low-risk social existence on everyone, tend to love him, whereas people with more risk tolerance who don't want anyone else telling them what they may or may not do, tend to dislike him (or worse).
Stanley, it was Reagan who mandated that emergency rooms must provide medical care to all, including those without money or insurance. However because our health care system is now heavily profit based, corporate ownership ( not as common during the Reagan era but beginning to expand) and exorbitantly expensive, many cannot afford any kind of insurance out of pocket and don’t work for companies that provide it. Walmart is notorious for that - benefits don’t kick in until staff work a minimum number of hours/week ( about 34) and most retail staff are not given full time schedules. That way Walmart can refuse health insurance, matching 401k contributions or other benefits to most of its employees. Other companies do the same. So the working poor use emergency rooms for primary care. I have seen this personally and The Pitt has dramatized the results very effectively. Amazon does the same, and has raised the hourly benefits threshold from 20/ week to 30. Managers usually schedule these employees for less than the benefits triggering threshold hours.
DeleteNow that the Obamacare subsidies have ended, and Medicaid also for many, hospitals are already reporting large increases in people going to the ER for routine care. They don’t have PCPs or simply can’t afford to have one.
Reagan did support cutting down domestic “ welfare” programs - it it was Clinton who actually did cut them- but he was a strong supporter of international humanitarian assistance, asking for more than Congress wanted to approve at times. Reagan understood, as trump doesn’t, that American humanitarian aid was a powerful form of soft power.
Experts estimate that about 760,000 have died because of the loss of American humanitarian aid. More than 500,000 deaths were of children. In only 1 1/2 years. The death count will exceed a million very soon.
DeleteDuring the Bush administration, Fauci and his team inaugurated a program called PEPFAR to reduce deaths from AIDs in Africa. It was supported by Bush. It was extremely successful and health economists say that Fauci’s efforts have saved 26,000,000 lives. 26 MILLION plus prevented about 8 million newborns from getting AIDs after being exposed to HIV during the birth process. If the newborns don’t get the medication right away they will usually develop HIV and eventually, AIDs. Trump recently cut this program too, closing 1700 treatment centers.
Where are the “ pro- life” people?
Why aren’t they screaming their heads off about this? Why aren't the bishops speaking out, and priests in the pulpits?
Jim, why isn’t the “ pro- life” movement organizing protests in DC? Why aren’t they running campaigns to contact Congress and the WH? Why do they care so much about blueberry sized embryos that still lack most of the biological systems that support human life and care so little for the lives of the global poor, including hundreds of thousands of babies - babies already born- and children?
I will return to the subject of Fauci’s “lies” in a while.
Off topic: Katherine, interesting story, longish, about Sigrid Undset's cause for canonization in Norway, briefly discussed on another thread:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.osvnews.com/oslos-bishop-on-why-sigrid-undsets-complex-life-compelling-writing-resonate-from-norway-to-us/
Thanks Jean, that is interesting! I found the Norwegian history in the first Kristin Lavransdattir book interesting, but I didn't know that much about Sigrid Undset.
Delete