Fauci testified for fourteen hours!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 2024

Greg Gutfeld's pathetic reaction: With apologies, a great deal more could be said about Kristen Welker's treatment of Elise Stefanik on last Sunday's Meet the Press.

The softballs were general over the set. At the point where yesterday's report left off, this was Welker's next question for her guest:

WELKER (1/7/24): I want to stay on track. You mentioned Pennsylvania. Would you vote to certify, and will you vote to certify, the results of the 2024 election, no matter what they show?

Fellow citizens, please! It's hard to imagine a sillier question—or an easier question to answer.

Can a member of Congress agree to certify an election which hasn't yet taken place? Such certification—or the withholding of same—is a basic congressional function. 

As Stefanik had noted in her speech to the House all the way back on January 6, many Democrats have refused to certify presidential elections in the past twenty years. How can a member say that she will certify the next election, in all fifty states, when she has no way of knowing how that election will have been conducted?

No question could be easier to answer. Stefanik did so ease, even as Welker wasted time trying to "pin her down" with silly clarifications.  

So it went as a red tribe star ran roughshod over her latest blue victim. That brings us to this week's interplay between Anthony Fauci and the red tribe clown, the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld.

Thanks to Peter Choi of The Hill, we can link you to a news report about Dr. Fauci's week. On Monday and Tuesday of the past week, Fauci testified—in private, with no transcripts yet provided—before the Republican-controlled Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

On Monday, the session ran a full seven hours. Tuesday's session seems to have lasted a similar length of time. That said, let's state the obvious: 

Because no transcript has yet been released, there is no way to know what Fauci actually said during those fourteen hours of testimony. All we have is a pair of summaries from Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the chairman of the committee. 

In this news report for The Hill, Choi records complaints from Democratic members of the committee, who say that Wenstrup's summaries have distorted what Fauci actually said. Sic semper congressional gong-shows.

Let's say it again:

At this point, there is no reliable way to know what Fauci said. You'd have to be a total idiot to assume that Wenstrup's summaries presented "fair and balanced" accounts of his lengthy testimony.

You'd have to be a total idiot—or you'd have to be Greg Gutfeld. On Thursday night, the perpetually angry Fox News star engaged in a fairly typical rant about the various "admissions" Fauci had "finally" made.

The angry fellow's rant was profane—and it was blindingly stupid. We've always tried to avoid the use of that unpleasant word at this site, but with a prime-time star like Gutfeld, words like "dumb" no longer suffice.

Gutfeld offered his rant on his eponymous 10 p.m. program, Gutfeld! Eventually, Gutfeld would introduce his panel—a panel made up of two B-grade comedians, one former professional wrestler, and the requisite conventionally attractive youngish woman.

If anything, the panel would offer ever fewer insights that Gutfeld himself had managed. First, though, Gutfeld staged his opening monologue. 

Early in the monologue, the angry star focused on jibes about Fauci's physical stature. Beyond that, he included a set of claims he can't possibly know to be accurate:

GUTFELD (1/11/24): The dwarf known as Doc copped to the following admissions:

The six foot social distancing rule had no basis in science; the lab leak isn't just a conspiracy theory; vaccine mandates and travel bans were a mistake; and oh, that's after his previously saying the lockdowns weren't his fault. 

So what exactly did he get right? That the media will believe anything, if it comes from a toadstool in a lab coat? Kudos to chairman Brad Wenstrup for holding Fauci's tiny hooves to the fire and refraining from throwing him out a window.

Dr. Fauci was described as "the dwarf known as Doc," but also as "a toadstool in a lab coat." Chairman Wenstrup was warmly praised for allegedly having held Dr. Fauci's "tiny hooves to the fire."

To watch the entire monologue, you can start by clicking here. For the sake of clarity, let's say it again:

Until Wenstrup agrees to release transcripts of Fauci's testimony, people like Gutfeld have no way of knowing what Fauci actually said.

In the passage we've posted, Gutfeld listed four "admissions" Fauci supposedly made. On its face, the alleged admission about the lab leak theory doesn't even make sense, a point we'll note below.

So far, the angry Fox star had restricted himself to denigrations about Fauci's height and weight. That said, the angry fellow was just getting warmed up.

Soon, he turned profane:

GUTFELD: Sounds like Fauci is less of a scientist and more of a magician making our rights and freedoms disappear while pulling the social distancing bullshit out of his ass.

For the record, Fox does a lot of BLEEPing on this deeply unintelligent show—but that analysis was allowed to air exactly as delivered.

And yes, that's what he actually said! In truth, the angry fellow was just getting warmed up, as you can see from this part of what followed:

GUTFELD: It was more like science fiction, which brings us to the biggest lie of all. Fauci finally admitted the lab leak isn't a conspiracy theory. That revelation had me look up what "Fauci" means in Italian. It means "lying two-faced son of a bitch."

[APPLAUSE]

The little [BLEEP] actually called the lab leak "molecularly impossible." So for years, Fauci sat in front of any camera with a red light on and said whatever he thought he had to say, even if it wasn't true.

Finally, producers had decided to BLEEP something Gutfeld said. Watching the screen, it's fairly easy to see that he had referred to Fauci as a "little f*cker," to the apparent delight of his studio audience.

When his angry rant was through, Gutfeld introduced his B-grade comedians and his former professional wrestler. They offered observations which were almost as dumb as his own.

Regarding the sheer stupidity of Gutfeld's rant, consider his claim that Dr. Fauci had "finally admitted the lab leak isn't a conspiracy theory." It was that alleged admission which had led the angry fellow to investigate what "Fauci" means in Italian.

That said:

What did Fauci actually say this week about the "lab leak" theory? Until Wenstrup allows the transcripts to appear, there will be no way to know.

That said, there would be nothing new about an "admission" that the lab leak theory is an actual possibility. Headline included, here's part of a report from Politico about an appearance by Fauci on Meet the Press in November 2022, some fourteen months ago:

Fauci on Covid lab leak theory: ‘I have a completely open mind’

Anthony Fauci, the retiring top official in the United States response to the Covid-19 pandemic, said Sunday he has “a completely open mind” about the origins of the respiratory virus.

“I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t,” Fauci said, when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the theory that the virus may have leaked from a lab in China in 2019.

Fauci acknowledged that a group of international, respected virologists has written that strong evidence shows the virus jumped from animals to humans, but said it “hasn’t been definitively proven.”

[...]

A report this fall from Vanity Fair and ProPublica, which said the Wuhan Institute of Virology dealt with an unspecified emergency at the time Covid-19 began, brought back to the forefront a debate about whether the virus might have come from a lab.

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in a separate interview Sunday, Fauci said he’d like to know “all of the details of what went on with the original people who were infected.”

In short, it's hard to know less than Gutfeld does. Also, it would be hard to behave in an uglier way when he insists on displaying his anger and his ignorance. 

In fairness, the B-room comedians and the former professional wrestler were there to join the studio audience in cheering the TV star on.

The sheer stupidity of Gutfeld's show is matched by the intensity of its host's anger and by the steady stream of propaganda it advances. As Gutfeld and Jesse Watters become the twin faces of Fox News, the dumbness level keeps increasing—and the wider world of the mainstream press corps continues to avert its gaze.

Increasingly, Gutfeld and Watters have come to define the culture of Fox News in prime time. Their programs are built around smirks and snark and dim-witted misstatements. Increasingly, this channel's stream of red tribe propaganda is now packaged in such raiment. 

Simply put, you can't run a large modern nation on this. You can't run a large modern nation on Gutfeld, or on the refusal by blue tribe elites to talk about same.