Inside the GOP Disinformation Campaign Targeting Fauci

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee launched a scripted disinformation attack against Dr. Anthony Fauci in a hearing on Wednesday, berating him for allegedly giving COVID-related recommendations that weren’t based on scientific evidence — apparently hoping that the American people would not remember that those very same Republicans have spent the past six years attacking, undermining, and defunding that very same science.

The hearing, which was led by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, looked a lot more like a coordinated narrative campaign than an independent search for facts. Republican senators repeatedly used nearly identical language to accuse Fauci of ignoring the science and destroying trust in public health, revealing what appears to be a scripted narrative attack on the former head of the U.S. COVID response. In doing so, Republicans also staged a form of epistemic inversion: lawmakers who had spent years attacking public health institutions were now recasting themselves as guardians of scientific integrity and placing a public health official on trial for supposedly “ignoring the science.”

Senator Rick Scott gave the most dishonest performance of all, condemning Fauci for undermining people’s confidence in public health and vaccines, and even suggesting that he is to blame for the rise in measles cases and associated deaths among children.

“[T]rust is crucial to public health and you, more than any other person or event in my lifetime, have destroyed that trust for millions of Americans,” Scott told Fauci. “You lied to hundreds of millions of people amid the worst public health crisis in a century.”

“[Y]ou destroyed the federal government’s credibility when it comes to public health,” he continued. “We have entire generations of Americans who, rightfully so, do not trust our institutions to keep people safe because of you.”

Scott has proposed legislation to prohibit the enforcement of vaccine mandates, attacked the electoral process and made it harder to vote in his state, and got rich by defrauding Medicare via his former company, so he knows a thing or two about undermining trust in institutions and lying to people.