With it becoming clear that COVID-19 management by the Trump regime has failed completely and that tens of thousands, and most likely hundreds of thousands more will die from the virus between now and Election Day, the regime in the last 48 hours has sharply shifted towards blaming Dr. Anthony Fauci and offering him up as a sacrificial scapegoat.
The White House is seeking to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, as President Donald Trump works to marginalize him and his dire warnings about the shortcomings in the U.S. coronavirus response.
In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official told NBC News on Sunday that "several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things." To bolster the case, the official provided NBC News with a list of nearly a dozen past comments by Fauci earlier in the pandemic that the official said had ultimately proven erroneous.
Among them: Fauci's comments in January that coronavirus was "not a major threat" and "not driven by asymptomatic carriers" and Fauci’s comment in March that "people should not be walking around with masks."
It was a move more characteristic of a political campaign furtively disseminating "opposition research" about an opponent than of a White House struggling to contain a pandemic that has already killed more than 135,000 Americans, according to an NBC News tally.
As I've long predicted, Dr. Fauci has now become the opposition, the Enemy, and will now be treated as such. And the regime always needs new Enemies.
Fauci, who runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had been a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and a key communicator with the public about the virus until the president soured on Fauci's sober assessments of the situation, which have increasingly conflicted with the more sanguine picture of a virus in retreat that the president has sought to paint.
In recent days, Fauci has deviated from Trump by disputing that the U.S. is "doing great" and faulting the decision in some states to re-open too quickly and sidestep the task force's suggested criteria for when it's safe to loosen restrictions. In one particularly alarming prediction, Fauci said he would not be surprised if the U.S. was soon adding 100,000 new cases per day— a figure that would reflect an abject failure to slow the spread.
Fauci declined to comment on the White House's attacks.
The White House effort to cast doubt on Fauci's judgment comes as coronavirus surges nationwide, which Trump has repeatedly downplayed as a result of increased testing rather than increased infections. Florida on Sunday reported over 15,000 new cases, the most any state has reported in a single day since the pandemic began. The U.S. on Friday also surpassed 70,000 new coronavirus cases nationwide for the first time ever.
As physicians and scientists have learned more about the novel coronavirus, the medical consensus on how to treat the virus and limit its spread has evolved — and not just in the U.S. Many of Fauci's assertions called into question by the White House official were based on the best available data at the time and were widely echoed by Trump, other members of the task force and senior White House officials.
"When you learn more, you change those recommendations," Surgeon General Jerome Adams, another member of the task force, told CBS News on Sunday. "Our recommendations have changed.”
I expect Jerome Adams and Dr. Deborah Birx will become the new government faces leading the "new" response, while Fauci is reassigned or demoted, or is driven to resign. At this point he may even be fired outright.
We'll see how long Fauci lasts, but the White House is clearly trying to lay the groundwork for his imminent departure from the government.
Meanwhile, lockdowns are coming, and they need to come sooner rather than later.
Houston leaders are calling for another lockdown as the number of active cases of the coronavirus in the county increased to more than 27,600 on Sunday. Houston's Harris County — the most populous county in Texas — has been the hardest-hit in the Lone Star State.
"Not only do we need a stay home order now, but we need to stick with it this time until the hospitalization curve comes down, not just flattens," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo tweeted Sunday. "Many communities that persevered in that way are reopening for the long haul. Let's learn from that & not make the same mistake twice."
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had previously resisted a mask order in the state, warned Friday that the state would need to lockdown further if the case numbers don't decrease.
Republicans and the ignorant, selfish public will resist and ignore these orders, I'm sure.
And they will die as a result.
Think about that.
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