Speaker 1: All right. We suspected this would happen. And now they are being very clear that
it's going to happen. If Republicans take control of the House at minimum in November, they are
going to launch a massive show investigation of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is
now what? He's 81 or how old is he now? 81 years old is going to be 82 years old in a few months
retiring. He is going to be investigated by Republicans if they take control of the House.
The Hill has an article about it. GOP Plots Fauci Probe After Midterms One Way or Another. If we are
in the majority, we will subpoena his records and he will testify in the Senate under oath. So Rand
Paul on the Senate side saying we are going to investigate in the Senate. Marjorie Taylor GREENE
and many others have said we are going Matt Gaetz, we are going to investigate in the House.
Rand Paul says if we win November and I'm chairman of a committee,
if I have subpoena power, we'll go after every one of Fauci's records. Now, we do need investigations
related to COVID and the response we do. But the investigations we need are into the lack of
preparation by the United States. Trump throwing out the pandemic pandemic response playbook
and disbanding the pandemic response team, the way in which medical professionals were ignored
from day one by the then Trump administration. All of those things do deserve an investigation,
and we should have an investigation into anti-vax as well as other disinformation propaganda content
that was disseminated. Investigating Fauci. And the reason they hate Fauci is Fauci was willing
to stand right next to Trump during those early press conferences in the pandemic. Remember, I
would cover those and just tell the medical truth about the virus that everybody needed to hear. And
he was more trusted than Trump on those issues, and so Trump couldn't fire him. Dr. Deborah
Burks On the other hand, while she sometimes would say things that were more or less true,
I was very, very willing to more or less mold her views to what Donald Trump wanted them to be.
And Dr. Fauci gave the best advice that the facts pointed to at the time. It exposed Trump to be
this sort of sideshow, dishonest liar who not only didn't seem to understand what was going on,
really only cared about getting himself elected. And Trump ended up vilifying Dr. Fauci.
And this is another reminder, by the way, of just how incompetently Trump was from
a political standpoint in handling the pandemic. Because Donald Trump I've said this before. Trump
could have treated COVID like 911 or like Pearl Harbor, and he could have come and said, but the
America the American people, this is going to be difficult. This is going to be difficult for the
planet and it's going to be difficult for the United States. We have the top experts. I am
completely confident in their ability to lead us. I'm going to be deferring to the experts.
We will be masking everyone up with a MAGA masks, and we are going to get the idea and then swoop in
and take the credit. And he would have sailed to win easy reelection. And a lot of people
constantly say Trump only lost the election because of the bad luck of the pandemic.
Wrong. Wrong. The pandemic was an event that could either destroy you or it could rocket you
to reelection. And we saw that in New Zealand and in some other places, when leaders were seen as
competently and efficiently and prudently handling the pandemic well, they were very much rewarded
with high approval ratings as well as sometimes reelection. This could have been a layup for Trump
if he sold the MAGA masks and said, We've got the best experts and look at how patriotic I
am. I'm protecting everybody around me. He would have easily been reelected. And there's a very
interesting article I encourage you to check out. Let me see what year it's from. It's in
The Daily Beast. It's from Oh, no, it's a new article. It's called The Four Stages of
Republican Misinformation, and it explains how it works. And the article says, quote,
First, Republicans use any means necessary to achieve power and promote their counter
majoritarian agenda. Remember, the modern American right wing supports ideas that aren't very
popular with the American people. The party, the Republican Party is very much against abortion.
The American people are mostly in favor of it. And there's many other examples that step one,
step two, they create and promote disinformation and lies to frighten their base and to sort of
trick them into believing that they are being oppressed by the people who are actually the
victims. And we saw this before. The doctors are going to oppress you. Be afraid of this mandate
and that mandate and this jab and magnetized arms from the vaccine and all this different stuff.
Third, they create a villain that they can target and attack. They scapegoat them. They smear them.
They intimidate them. They did that with Fauci. And then the fourth step is never back down,
never apologize. Instead, double down when their lies are exposed and then pivot towards
more fear mongering. If you can throw in racism or xenophobia, that's also a staple. And that is
how the Republican misinformation works. It's what they're doing to Fauci and it's going to continue.