OPINION

Red-Faced Fauci in Denial

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The release of more than 3,000 emails to and from Dr. Anthony Fauci about the coronavirus pandemic has left him red-faced. A liberal website, BuzzFeed News, obtained Fauci’s emails from the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and released them to the public.

As Trump declared in North Carolina on Saturday night, “Fauci has, perhaps, never been more wrong than when he denied the virus and where it came from. The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China.”

The Republican leader in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), observed that “I know the American people don’t have trust in Dr. Fauci,” adding, “let’s find a person we can trust.” Phyllis Schlafly criticized Fauci back in 2014 for allowing people infected with the Ebola virus into our country.

“If Biden believes in science, he must fire Fauci,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), accusing the longtime federal bureaucrat of “exploiting his position in government.” Fauci’s emails reveal a self-promoter who seemed as concerned about how he was portrayed on Saturday Night Live as on the science.

Trump observed that Fauci is “a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he’s a hell of a promoter. He likes television more than any politician in this room, and they like television.”

Many Republicans, from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), call on Fauci to resign or be fired. Despite this chorus of criticism, the Biden Administration press secretary Jen Psaki announced that it is “very confident in Dr. Fauci.”

“Fauci said powerfully at the beginning: no masks,” Trump reminded us on Saturday. “Then he went into masks, and then he became a radical masker. … Let’s wear them for another five or six years,” became Fauci’s tyrannical new position.

Fauci’s failure to focus on early treatment of the illness with medications such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is grounds enough for firing him. He was alerted as early as February 2020 to the possible benefits of using HCQ to treat Covid symptoms, but then played dumb by denying the value of early treatment outside of hospitals.

Throughout the crisis, Fauci pandered to the liberal media, even considering having a “tag along” by a CBS News correspondent. Meanwhile Fauci rebuffed a White House request to review a draft op-ed by a conservative colleague by saying “I do not have time for this.” 

In March 2020, barely a month into the pandemic, a physicist and CEO of Bio-Signal Technologies, Erik Nielsen, sent Fauci an email explaining that HCQ and another drug could help treat patients. Fauci showed his disinterest in early treatment by saying the email was “too long” for him to read.

In testimony last month before a Senate committee, where Fauci clashed with the medical doctor Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)Fauci stated that “the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the lab suspected of creating the virus.

Yet the former FDA commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, disclosed on Sunday how Fauci declared to foreign leaders a year ago that the origin of coronavirus may have been from a laboratory in China. The official line from Communist China has been that the virus started with an infected bat.

“The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China,” Trump urges. “We should all declare within one unified voice that China must pay.”

As Trump explained, “The United States should immediately take steps to phase in a firm 100% tariff on all goods made in China.” Instead, Biden continues to appease China rather than send them a bill for all the harm it has caused with its virus.

A scientist who advised Fauci in early 2020 about the possibility that coronavirus originated from a Wuhan lab has inexplicably deactivated his Twitter account. Way back in January 2020, Dr. Kristian Andersen, a California virologist, emailed Fauci about the potential laboratory origin of the virus.

On Sunday, more media grandstanding by Fauci was met by a rude awakening at the landmark Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. A crowd of angry protesters in that heavily Democrat neighborhood demanded that Fauci be fired, and a placard depicted him with a Hitler-style mustache.

Inside, Fauci gushed that he is “so honored to be here” and continued to promote mass vaccination as the only solution. Meanwhile blacks, more than any other ethnic group, have overwhelmingly rejected the Covid vaccine, with less than a quarter of them accepting even the first shot, despite Biden’s goal of 70% vaccination of all Americans.

“‘Faucism’ The only legal religion?” shouted another sign. One protester said to New York City police officers, “You should have arrested Fauci.”

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.