I want to call your attention to an actually headline on the Fox News website today. This is a sceen shot; I am not going to link to this crap.
I found that online today, mind you.
As I understand it, recently Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro teamed up to release a new conspiracy theory that Dr. Anthony Fauci is personally responsible for covod-19. “For whatever reason, Dr. Fauci wanted to weaponize that virus and he is the father of it,” Navarro wrote. “He has killed millions of Americans, if that thing came from the lab, and I’m 99.999% sure it did.”
Before we go any further, do note that fact-checkers went after the new claims back in February and found them to be bogus.
Today there was another Senate hearing in which Rand Paul made an ass of himself arguing with Dr. Fauci. They might as well make this a Netflix series.
During a Senate hearing on the pandemic response, Paul alleged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been sending funding to the Wuhan lab, which then “juiced up” a virus that was originally found in bats to create a supervirus that can infect human cells.
Paul pressed Fauci on the theory that the novel coronavirus was created in the Wuhan lab, and then somehow escaped, either because of an accident or because it was deliberately released.
“Sen. Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect,” Fauci said. “The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund ‘gain of function research’ in the Wuhan Institute.”
Paul continued to argue with Fauci, who is the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), accusing him of cooperating with the Chinese government, and supporting the laboratory that bioengineered a deadly virus.
Fauci noted that although the NIH did fund a project at the Wuhan lab, it was not meant for “gain of function” research into human-made superviruses.
I had to look up what “gain of function” meant. This is from Forbes:
While the NIH did provide funding to a New York based non profit called EcoHealth Alliance that conducted research on bat coronaviruses, there’s no evidence to support the theory the scientists “juiced up” Covid-19 in the lab, as Paul claimed, or that the money funded gain of function research.
Moving on, Paul asked if Fauci could “categorically say that the COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory?”
“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done,” Fauci responded, before adding he is “fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.”
That last remark led to a headline in Murdoch’s New York Post that “Fauci admits COVID-19 could have come from Wuhan lab.” I’m not linking to that crap, either.
Tucker Carlson waded into it last night, I take it. Aaron Blake:
While talking about National Institutes of Health funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Carlson referred to “the deadly experiments that were going on there” — which is valid, given that’s the kind of thing virologists do.
But he then referred to them, as if the lab-leak theory were proved, as “the experiments that clearly went so wrong.”
Again, there is no firm evidence that the spread of the coronavirus was the result of experiments that “clearly” went “so wrong” in the Wuhan lab. Carlson has a knack for suggesting things without saying them directly, but this veered in a much more conspiratorial and unproven direction than usual.
“This wouldn’t have happened if Tony Fauci didn’t allow it to happen — that is clear,” Carlson continued, referring to the funding. “It’s an amazing story. It is a shocking story. In a functional country, there would be a criminal investigation into Tony Fauci’s role in the covid pandemic that has killed millions and halted our country, changing it forever. So why isn’t there a criminal investigation into Tony Fauci’s role in this pandemic?”
The pandemic wouldn’t have happened if Dr. Fauci hadn’t allowed it to happen? Does that mean Anthony Fauci is the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
Seriously, this is way out of bounds, even for Tucker Carlson.
They murdered Dr. Tiller after O’Reilly’s lies that he was a killer.
And there is the right wing nut job who murdered five at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood after the “baby parts” lies.
And nary a mention of any of it.
****er Carlson is always out of bounds. When one can't think outside the line (forget thinking outside the box) paradoxically there no bounds to be out of.
I find him to be robotic, hate-filled, racist, etc., but I am truly frightened by the robotic racist hate-filled etc. who lap up his vile political vomitus as if it were the finest pudding on earth. Their willingness to believe his dribble, and even to act on it, is the real disease infecting our country.
****er is just the little pimple that could grow up to be a boil on the skin of the medium.
Why waste time with Carlson? Or Paul?
Over 100 Republicans, including former officials, threaten to split from G.O.P.
I’m trying to understand the pressure the Trump-aligned Republicans are facing, to abandon any kind of fealty to the truth and go with herd.
They might as well make this a Netflix series.
LMAO! That's about the size of it.
That Motherphucker, KKKarlson is getting more and more desperate.
As is (Dumb)FUX "news."
Phucker's the lead-off hitter for FUX "news'" prime-time "Seditionist's Row."
When Phucker's "White Power Hour" mercifully concludes, FUX follows him with Unibrow, and finishes with Eva Braungraham's show, "Mangle."
They're all upping the KKKrazee, because there are newer, stupider, even more ignorant and bigoted networks which are challenging FUX: "Newsschmucks, and Onanism.
After the success with the Covid vaccine, maybe the CDC should look into finding vaccines to fix stupidity and bigotry.
Carlson's reasoning is motivated.
"Trump" should be substituted for "Tony Fauci" throughout Carlson's last paragraph.
It is simple and not at all perplexing, but no one says what it is, so here goes:
Fauci is the American face of any and all efforts to restrict the circulation/evolution of the virus.
As such, he is a potential source of accountability.
As such, he must be destroyed.
There is nothing more or else to it.
Rand Paul is not taking the heat he deserves. Libertarians are not taking the heat they deserve. Isolationism and minimal governmental intervention ideas gave us an open flank to defend ourselves from the pandemic and to deal with in a unified way.
Instead of admitting the faults in the ideology the Libertarians are trying to make Fauci the scapegoat. The honest scapegoat, of course, is not Fauci.
Rand Paul and the naive ideology he and his followers represent and act out is certainly to blame for the poor pandemic response problems which are continuing to this day. So to Trump and the Republican party as collaborators with erroneous Libertarian thinking.
I cannot speak of Tucker since I quit listening to him back in his bow tie days, except to say he always struck me as a naive blowhard not worth the attention he seems to crave.
Why does the spell-checker flag naive?
.
"79% of Democrats said Fauci has done a good or excellent job handling the pandemic, compared with 56% of independents and 54% of Republicans. "
This from 2020 but I don't think numbers on Fauci have gone down. However, Fauci has made no secret about how much BETTER Biden is to work with than Trump. Therin lies the purpose of Tucker's lies. Look at it.
1) Fauci always polled better than Trump
2) Biden has done a good job on COVID according to all polls, polling above 50% on the issue with REPUBLICANS.
3) Covid will continue to be the dominant issue in a Trump v Biden matchup in the future and Fauci is the most trusted expert on the subject. Fauci has been allowed to follow the science under Biden and he couldn't under Trump. That difference cost tens of thousands of lives under Trump. So Tucker is trying to discredit Fauci.
This doesn't prove Trump will run in 2024 but if Biden runs in 2024, his handling of Covid will be central. Trump's mishandling of Covid will be an issue the Trump successor will have to defend or denounce.
All these folks conveniently forget the rest of the world is infected with this virus, hence the word pandemic is used. I hope Fauci and his family have lots of protection, for years to come as well. With these crazies and guns and who knows what else, no telling what some malcontent is up to. Same with Dr Peter Hotez here in Houston. thanks former guy.
There’s the basis for a whole bunch of defamation lawsuits here.