The Media Research Center didn’t reach the heights of Fauci Derangement Syndrome that others in the ConWeb did, though it did try to manufacture a fake scandal out of a release of some of his emails. When he resurfaced in June, though, the MRC tried to make up for lost time. Tom Olohan gloated about Fauci facing hostile Republicans in a June 4 post as part of his employer’s narrative that any correction of lies and misinformation is “censorship”:
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded answers from former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci on the Biden administration’s relentless drive to censor the COVID-19 lab leak theory online.
During a June 3 Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing, Fauci fielded questions on gain-of-function research, horrific experiments involving puppies, and collusion between Big Tech and the government. Jordan specifically pressed Fauci over government pressure on Facebook’s parent company Meta to censor the lab leak theory, among other topics. Jordan twice confronted Fauci with internal Facebook admissions of censorship following Biden administration pressure.
“In our study on the censorship of the Biden Administration working with Big Tech, I want to read you a WhatsApp message from Mark Zuckerberg: ‘Can we include that the White House put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory,’” Jordan read to Fauci. Jordan went on to emphasize that this occurred only a few months into the Biden Administration. The congressman added, “[Meta executives are] certainly feeling the pressure to downplay any lab leak theory and go with the natural origin theory.”
[…]During the hearing, Rep. Rich McMormick (R-GA) also spoke out against the censorship of so-called COVID-19 disinformation. “In 2020, I was censored. My medical license was threatened because I disagreed with bureaucrats. Literally taken off the internet as a person who is treating patients with leading edge technologies.”
McMormick went on a tear against Biden Administration bureaucrats who thought they knew what was best for his patients and who were willing to censor all opposing opinions. “My opinions were relegated to conspiracy, misinformation by so-called health care experts, who had never treated a patient throughout the entire pandemic.”
Despite Olohan complaining that the lab-leak theory is being portrayed as “so-called COVID-19 disinformation,” that right-wing obsession has yet to be definitively proven.
The same day, Curtis Houck whined that non-right-wing media don’t viscerally hate Fauci like he does:
ABC, CBS, and NBC were not only exhausting airtime fawning over and spinning for Hunter Biden as his first criminal trial got underway, but also rallying around Dr. Tony Fauci on Monday night and Tuesday morning over the “contentious”, “heated” and “hostile” House hearing he endured on the COVID-19 pandemic response that left him “defiant” yet “emotional” over “the threats” posed by critics.
Like with their defenses of Hunter and eagerness toward the Trump trial, ABC was the most defensive of Fauci. On Monday’s World News Tonight, anchor David Muir teased “the heated testimony” with “Fauci turning deeply emotional when revealing the death threats against his family.”
There it is. Equate criticism of liberals — one who crippled lives and kept families from saying goodbye to loved ones — with threats from crockpots to malign and shutdown debate.
Houck is never going to admit that Fauci arguably saved more lives than he “crippled.” since it’s forbidden in right-wing media to remind people that there was a pandemic that killed thousands. Instead he whined that Fauci brought up the death threats he has received from Houck’s fellow right-wingers.
David Searc rehashed the “censorship” narrative in a June 11 post parroting the claims of a right-wing moneybags:
All-In Podcast co-host David Sacks slammed Big Tech for aiding and abetting “America’s Doctor” in a censorship campaign.
On May 31, tech entrepreneur Sacks ripped Big Tech companies for helping to hide former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[T]here was a comprehensive effort by people at [National Institutes of Health], likely at Fauci’s direction, to again, not just cover this up, but to smear scientists who were telling us the truth,” Sacks said. He added that this effort went after “people like [Stanford medical professor] Jay Bhattacharya, who then got censored and banned on social media.”
Alex Christy tried to justify right-wing hate of Fauci in a June 18 post:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed former NIH Director Anthony Fauci to Monday’s edition of The Late Show to promote his new book, to look back at the COVID-19 pandemic, and lament “the politicization of science” and the “hostility” he has received from Republicans. Naturally, there was no self-reflection on Fauci’s part, nor was Colbert willing to go there.
Colbert lamented, “Politicization of science is dangerous, but it’s not a new thing. This has happened in the past. You’ve dealt with it in the past. Have you seen anything like the way it is now? Because certainly just a few days ago, your testimony down in Washington, D.C., made headlines for the hostility you received.”
[…]Fauci wants to portray himself as a man of science who simply spoke the truth, but Fauci has admitted he was not above telling a white lie if he felt it served his purposes and he tried to squash any initial discussion of the lab leak theory. Simply noticing that is not, as Colbert would say, the “politicization of science.”
The same day, Houck returned to grouse that more non-right-wing media types didn’t spew hate at Fauci:
Tuesday’s CBS Mornings marked the latest stop on Dr. Tony Fauci’s book tour for his memoir and, considering co-host/Democratic donor Gayle King and co-host/former NFL player Nate Burleson were at the table, it largely consisted of one gross softball after another sucking up to this former leftist icon about how tough it must be to be him, how some don’t understand science, and how America would be in trouble if Trump were to be elected.
Despite their hobnobbing, co-host Tony Dokoupil actually pressed Fauci on two issues Americans are most likely to care about when looking back at the coronavirus pandemic: the toll of school closures and the virus’s origins.
Houck went on to praise Dokoupil — whom he usually falsely smears as a “socialist” — for sounding like a right-winger in questioning Fauci:
In contrast, Dokoupil’s questions were not only challenging (especially for a liberal broadcast network interview), but drew out the side of Fauci we’ve come to expect when he’s not having his feet rhetorically rubbed: disgusted and testy.
[…]Dokoupil’s other contrarian moment actually came when King tried to suck up to Fauci by lamenting “people blame you for Covid” and “[t]here’s some conspiracy that, you know, you’re working behind the scenes, that there was a lab in China that you’re responsible for.”
After Fauci said “the viruses funded by the NIH were so distant from the origin standpoint” pf COVID-19 it couldn’t have come from a lab, Dokoupil invoked Harvard and MIT biologist Alina Chan’s New York Times column arguing for the lab leak. Once again, Fauci scoffed[.]
Nicholas Fondacaro groused about Fauci as part of his hate-watching of “The View,” where he was promoting his new memoir, in a June 20 post:
After teasing it was a while ago, ABC’s The View finally had Dr. Anthony Fauci on the show to help him hawk his new book. The much-reviled public health official received copious amounts of praise from the liberal ladies and no questions about how the policies he pushed harmed a generation of children and infringed on individual liberties. Instead, he got a platform to lash out at those who opposed him, calling them “bastards.”
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg led off the questioning, teeing him up to attack those looking to hold abusive government bureaucrats to account. “You say empathy has always guided you as a physician and a public servant but there’s also a Latin phrase that has consistently come up for you…” she said.
Recalling his high school education, Fauci took a swipe at his critics: “And one of the things that they mentioned to us when things got down and you felt that the world was caving in on you was illegitimi non carborundum which means ‘don’t let the bastards wear you down.’”
[…]Fauci lamented that Trump “missed an opportunity” to “use the bully pulpit of the presidency” to get his “millions and millions of followers who are very loyal to him” to obey the masking mandates. “All he had to do was say ‘The CDC is recommending masks we know it’s going to save lives, do it.’ And he missed an opportunity,” he huffed.
Faux-conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin claimed she once tried to convince Trump to wear a mask by telling him he “looked cool” in it.
They refused to press Fauci on how closing schools hurt the educational and social development of millions of children, but they did allow him to end the three-segment long interview by suggesting the real problem during the pandemic was that people who were not obeying government bureaucrats.
It was Clay Waters’ turn to whine that non-right-wing journalists don’t hate Fauci as much as he does in a June 22 post:
In a two-part interview airing Tuesday and Wednesday, the PBS News Hour interviewed controversial COVID responder Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has a new autobiography out. But Fauci was fawned over by tax-funded PBS, couching mild criticism in general terms and steering away from truly important issues about COVID.
[…]Part Two of the interview got into COVID politics and his clashes with his boss, President Donald Trump, but Fauci remained immune to any tough questioning by [anchor Geoff] Bennett. He sympathized with Fauci: “The attacks on you, the rhetorical attacks on you, actually led to real threats.”
Bennett: Reflecting on the pandemic, the partisan policy responses, the misinformation, the disinformation, it raises the real question of whether Americans will listen to federal public health officials and the guidance that they provide the next time a major epidemic rolls around. How do you see it?
Fauci: ….once you have a doubt as to what`s true or not, science, which is based on the truth and data and evidence, all of a sudden, you stop trusting the scientific process and science. And that`s really dangerous.
Yes, it’s arrogant Dr. “I am the science” Fauci again, intolerant of criticism, at least coming from the right.
That’s not arrogance — that’s just the reasonable response of someone responding to bad-faith right-wing criticism he has heard too many times, much of it stemming from the reality that Fauci did, in fact, care about the science, unlike Trump.