The “facepalm?” That point when Trump referenced the State Department and said: “Or as we call it, the Deep State Department,” and Dr. Fauci just happened to bury his head in his hand? We had a bit of a laugh and thought of Dr. Fauci as the sword-bearer of common-sense, and the common good. We still do.

But not everyone sees Fauci as one of the good guys. The usual suspects are angry at the scientist who dares to tamper down some of Trump’s rosier predictions, no matter how many times Fauci’s predictions have proven reliable.

The New York Times reports that it is becoming a growing problem, with #FauciFraud trending on Twitter, and prominent conservatives, such as Tom Fitton, head of Judicial Watch, and Bill Mitchell, who hosts the far-right radio show “Your Voice America,” questioning Fauci’s motivations. The problems go beyond casting doubt on the real science that gives Americans their best real chance at getting through all this.

Even though Fauci has dutifully served under presidents from both parties, you’ll never guess which relationships the far-right emphasizes:

Many of the anti-Fauci posts, some of which pointed to a seven-year-old email that Dr. Fauci had sent praising Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State, have been retweeted thousands of times. On YouTube, conspiracy-theory videos about Dr. Fauci have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the past week. In private Facebook groups, posts disparaging him have also been shared hundreds of times and liked by thousands of people, according to the Times analysis.

Seven-year-old emails praising a secretary of state becomes part of a conspiracy? I would bet there are hundreds of letters or emails between Dr. Fauci and Republicans which … won’t matter at all unless those Republicans are currently Trump loyalists.

The torrent of falsehoods aimed at discrediting Dr. Fauci is another example of the hyperpartisan information flow that has driven a wedge into the way Americans think. For the past few years, far-right supporters of President Trump have regularly vilified those whom they see as opposing him. Even so, the campaign against Dr. Fauci stands out because he is one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts and a member of Mr. Trump’s virus task force, and it is unfolding as the government battles a pathogen that is rapidly spreading in the United States.

Other than the deaths, and sacrifices made by the healthcare workers, the above paragraph might be one of the saddest aspects of the entire crisis. Even as we ramp-up toward the worst of the crisis, some refuse to let go of their Trump “loyalty” above both fact and safety. Yes, we here are critical of Trump all the time, even more so lately. But we don’t contradict what we hear as fact or science because it somehow impacts Democrats, and we would love to report good news done through Trump policy.

But the Right-wing doesn’t see things quite so cleanly:

“There seems to be a concerted effort on the part of Trump supporters to spread misinformation about the virus aggressively,” said Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington who has studied misinformation.

We just had to do a column on Rudy Giuliani writing that the drug hydroxychloroquine has a 100% success rate, and that Democratic governors are attempting to use the situation to hurt Trump. Yes, there is a concerted effort. Not only does the drug not have a 100% success rate, but we had a quote this morning from a CDC doctor who doubted the drug had any effectiveness.

The article explains how the Right has distrusted “experts” for quite some time, but that during an epidemic, conspiracy theories kill. The former mayor of New York and the president of the United States are bordering upon engaging conspiracy theories. (Rudy went too far for Twitter), and it seems the Far-right is happy to help those theories kill.

Tragically, according to the Times, the nation had near-complete trust in Fauci and his team, right up through mid-March, when Fauci began accompanying Trump at the podium, and downplaying some of the statements. Then came the facepalm “picture” (which is all it was), and the article referencing the email in the “American Thinker” conservative blog (how is that for irony?), and then all hell broke loose, Qanon, Facebook, and now #FauciFraud.

In today’s America, some on the right would literally place their lives in Trump’s hands over the man who has worked for us since 1984 trying to stamp out disease and keep us healthy. Amazing, and yet all too believable.

****

Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom