Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

The Fauci diary is damning on so many scores, but the indictment of legacy media for acting as Fauci’s PR team strikes me as one of the worst.

Every time Fauci was caught on COVID’s origins, he ran to his loyal lapdogs in legacy media to defend him.

Follow along ⤵️

To start, here’s Fauci, privately confessing his origin theory of COVID had been debunked in January 2020.

But Fauci, seemingly, didn’t want people thinking that COVID could’ve come from a lab in Wuhan, China.

So he turned to the legacy media to claim the science was settled.

Concerns about a potential lab leak origin started to bubble up in May 2020.

The doctor went to @NatGeo to explain that there was “no scientific evidence” that COVID came from a lab…despite telling his diary he “knew this was a possibility” in January 2020.

In what came to be the defining legacy media treatment of Saint Fauci, @NatGeo printed his claim — which the doctor knew to be false — as gospel truth in its pages, saying that he “shot down” so much as discussing the lab leak theory.

The rest of legacy media — whom the Constitution holds as the chief mechanism of government accountability—ran headlong with Fauci’s lie without so much as a question.

Look at these headlines from @CNN (@ChrisCillizza), @BusinessInsider and @CBSNews.

It didn’t end there. The legacy press would continue to serve as Fauci’s stenographers to bury the lab leak hypothesis.

When damning emails tying Fauci to Wuhan were released in late June 2021, his first move was to go to the legacy press, namely @CNN and @washingtonpost.

How did those pieces requested by Dr. Fauci to shift blame away from his potential role in COVID’s origins turn out?

@CNN elided anything in the emails about Fauci and Wuhan labs, instead focusing on how hard the pandemic was on the Good Doctor.

Pure propaganda.

From the goodness of their own heart, @CNN also published a piece around the same time claiming the emails were being “misconstrued.”

It wasn’t any different at @washingtonpost, who used their platform not to investigate any of Dr. Fauci’s suspicious contacts with labs studying coronaviruses in Wuhan but instead put out a puff piece about how kindhearted the doctor is about answering the public’s emails.

But later that month, Fauci’s diary reveals he was worried about his public connection to the Wuhan lab and the lab leak theory’s gaining traction. In the diary, he claimed he was always open to the theory.

Right.

In any case, it was time to go back to his media defenders.

Among other hits, Fauci would appear on the @nytimes Sway podcast with @karaswisher in following those concerns.

In case you thought Swisher might’ve held Fauci’s feet to the fire, the subtitle of the episode is “America’s chief immunologist claps back.”

But things really heated up later that month when Fauci testified before @RandPaul and his committee in July 2021.

Fauci had been on @CNN the night before. The outlet’s coverage of the hearing read the same as Fauci’s diary. Make of that what you will.

After the hearing, Fauci appeared on @MSNBC with @AriMelber.

The show’s framing of Fauci’s exchange with @RandPaul also reads identical to Fauci’s diary.

Wonder how that came to be.

A few journos were particularly generous in using their platform to amplify Fauci’s dishonesty.

In July 2020, Fauci’s diary records dinner with the “terrific” @jaketapper. “Friendship building”!

Later that month, Tapper had Fauci on to “unload” on @RandPaul about COVID origins

As @emilyjashinsky points out, that “friendship” eventually led to Fauci writing questions for Tapper to…ask Fauci.

Hard-hitting journalism.

Another journalist friend was @chucktodd. The two had what Fauci’s diary calls “a really nice conversation” in June 2021 after Fauci said the lab leak was a “preposterous” “conspiracy theory.”

A year later, Todd had Fauci on to claim the doc had “a completely open mind” on it.

There’s no story bigger than the origin of the global pandemic that tore apart our society.

The legacy press didn’t just get that story wrong. They actively worked to carry water for the chief voice responsible for obscuring the truth around what happened to mislead Americans.

I’ll have more on this here and at my newsletter, but wanted to take a moment to commend @RandPaul and his team for their Herculean effort at holding Dr. Fauci accountable when the people who should have been doing so instead defended him.