Because Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering any questions, last week’s Senate hearing was reduced to a grudge match that produced no new information on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 7 million people worldwide, including 1.1 million Americans.
Fauci was the nation’s most important health official and White House adviser as the virus gained a foothold in early 2020 and proceeded to spread its death grip across all 50 states.
Despite his infuriating refusal to even defend himself, lest his answers lead to criminal charges, the hearing still served a useful purpose, albeit on a separate crucial matter.
The release of Fauci’s diaries, written on government computers, is another painful reminder of how the mainstream media has cavalierly failed America over the past decade.
Only because of the persistence of GOP Sen. Rand Paul, chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which released much of those diaries, do we know that Fauci often said in private things that contradicted what he said publicly.
A key example involves suspicions that a leak from a lab in China that was doing gain-of-function research, funded in part by America, was the source of the virus.
Fauci was well aware of the funding and the lab’s work, but nonetheless denounced the suspicions, calling them conspiracy theories.
Yet he privately conceded he was uncertain, especially after a conference call with 11 other scientists, most of whom thought the lab-leak theory was the most likely culprit, a fact he noted in his diary but not publicly.
Similarly, he boasted in his diary that he was a principal architect behind the idea of shutting down much of society, including schools, offices and even churches.
In a March 15, 2020, entry, under the words “BIG DAY!” in red letters, he wrote that he had a conversation with then Gotham Mayor Bill de Blasio and “convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools.”
He cited “a similar call” with an aide to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who told him that based on Fauci’s public remarks, Newsom “decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants.”
Although those policies lacked a factual basis, they caused long-term damage to children’s learning and resulted in draconian economic pain now widely regarded as unnecessary.
But as Fox News reports, in a later interview on ABC News, Fauci denied any role in lockdowns.
“They always come back and say, ‘Fauci was responsible for shutting schools down.’ I had nothing to do [with it]!” he claimed.
Star-struck
Fame also warped his judgment.
As he told his Dear Diary after a worshipful piece on the front page of the Washington Post: “It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable in the world.”
He also was star-struck, noting that Barbra Streisand called him asking for vaccine advice.
His diaries capture his dinners and private conversations with TV anchors and other big wigs, so we can be sure they knew Fauci often spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, for example, twice hosted dinners at his home for Fauci, while others texted and emailed him with praise for his public appearances and private conversations.
They supposedly were covering the death and destruction, what the origins were and what the government was doing to stop it.
But the media didn’t cite their favorite source’s double talk or private misgivings.
Instead of covering Fauci, they were covering for Fauci, and once again betrayed the public by hiding an inconvenient truth.
The case fits an infuriating pattern seen repeatedly since Donald Trump entered the political arena in 2015.
After the networks and major publishing outlets decided he was unfit for the Oval Office, they distorted their coverage to damage him and boost his opponents.
Still no final verdict
In this case, Fauci was the good guy of the pandemic and Trump the nutty, erratic problem, facts be damned.
The pattern was established during 2016 general election campaign, when the media gleefully swallowed hook, line and sinker Hillary Clinton’s fake Russian dossier.
Leaks from the FBI, the Obama White House and CIA created a feverish race to confirm that Trump was a Kremlin asset.
It was a dirty trick in which the deep state nearly stole an election, yet the same media that turned it into Pulitzer gold never owned up to their mistakes.
Another example of malfeasance is the way legacy organizations showed no curiosity about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in the White House, despite numerous public examples.
He gave almost no interviews, and was protected by his staff from answering even routine questions, lest he misstate a policy that would have to walk back.
The media could see all this, but never dared to dig into his health if it would help Trump.
It was not until Biden’s brain freeze in the first debate in 2024 that left-leaning outlets panicked that Trump would win again.
When Kamala Harris got the nomination in a backroom deal, there were no demands for a clean, open process.
There was only applause for the “joy” that Harris brought to the race.
Fauci benefited from the same double standard, for the same reason.
Anyone who made Trump look bad was a hero.
The first COVID cases in the US were discovered in January 2020, the start of Trump’s final year in the Oval Office in his first term.
According to his diary, Fauci wrote in the same month about the possibility that “the virus might have originated in an open-air ‘wet market,’ ” where live animals were sold, in Wuhan, China.
He also wrote that “we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” and added, that, “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”
A rival theory about a leak from a Wuhan lab also gained traction, and as Trump began calling it the “China virus,” the usual media suspects revolted.
A New York Times reporter wrote on social media that “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots.”
But six years later, with Fauci getting a sweeping pardon from Biden, there is still no final COVID verdict in sight.
As Dr. Scott Atlas, a Fauci critic and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, writes in The Post: “the media clung to an absurd, Kafkaesque hero-worship of the man who was destroying millions of lives.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
