Woolery good. Fauci bad.

Today, the President of the United States shared a tweet claiming that the CDC and other public health officials are “lying” about COVID-19 in order to hurt his chances of winning reelection. It wasn’t clear from the tweet, which was authored by second-rate conservative conspiracy theorist Chuck Woolery, the former host of the syndicated daytime gameshow Love Connection and co-author of the 1968’s execrable “Naturally Stoned,” what exactly these scientists have been lying about, but I don’t suppose that really matters to Trump’s followers. [Is COVID-19 not really contagious? Are people not really dying from COVID-19? Is it the masks that are killing us?]

But that’s not the worst of it. Not only is Trump sharing harmful conspiracy theories about public health officials “lying” in relation to COVID-19, at a time when, one would think, he should be encouraging everyone in the country to follow the guidance of our contagious disease experts. [Remember, 138,247 Americans have already lost their lives to COVID-19, and new cases are spiking across the country.] But, at the same time, he’s apparently given the word to White House staff to start questioning the competence of the nation’s foremost authority on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

It would appear as though, over the past few days, several members of the White House staff have been reaching out to members of the press in what seems to be a coordinated attack against Fauci. Here are just a few of those instances that have been recorded thus far. As for why this is happening, one can only assume the Donald Trump has decided that Fauci should take the blame for his own incompetence. [Make no mistake, this is more about Donald Trump’s self-preservation that it is about the health and wellbeing of the American people, and always has been.]

As Senator Chris Murphy said, having “White House staff sending reporters opposition research on their own top infectious disease doctor in the middle of a worsening pandemic that has already killed 130,000,” is “nuclear grade bananas.” But that’s where we are, my fellow Americans. Instead of expending effort to stop the spread of this disease, and urging every American to wear a mask, the White House is mobilizing against its own top infectious disease expert — a move that will undoubtedly lead the deaths of more Americans.

When asked about all of this today, Ben Sommers, a doctor who teaches public health at Harvard, had the following to say. “When the president is calling the guidance wrong and endorsing the view that these public health experts are lying, it makes it incredibly difficult for the public to know what to do,” he told The Washington Post. “It erodes the long-term ability of our government to provide one of its basic goals which is to protect the public safety.”

Nuclear grade bananas indeed.

update: Woolery, days after posting the above tweet about public health officials lying about COVID-19, shared that his son had been diagnosed with the disease. He then suspended his Twitter account.

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19 Comments

  1. Posted July 13, 2020 at 10:06 pm | Permalink

    One side has facts, evidence and science. The other side has this….

  2. John Brown
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 5:14 am | Permalink

    Spin the Covid Wheel of Fortune, what do you have to lose?

  3. iRobert
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 5:59 am | Permalink

    Trump should try attacking himself as his re-election strategy. Maybe he could talk about himself in the third person and pretend he isn’t the same guy that was in office all this time. His supporters are so confused and detached from reality, it would probably work. They’ve been suckered by every other insane thing he’s done or said so far. It’s worth a try.

  4. iRobert
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 6:05 am | Permalink

    Trump should claim it has been Alec Baldwin doing an impression of him in the White House all this time – a deep state conspiracy. The only way to remove Alec Baldwin is to elect the real Donald Trump this time.

    I think the Trumpanzees will eat it up.

  5. Jean Henry
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 6:12 am | Permalink

    Kind of amazing that Trump hasn’t countered this multi pronged attack on his presidency by opening up all those sealed indictments and bringing down the deep state…
    What’s taking him so long?

  6. Meta
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 7:10 am | Permalink

    The Daily Beast: “Top Trump Ally Preps a New Assault on Fauci”

    As Donald Trump and his press secretary sought to downplay the White House’s own effort to scapegoat Dr. Anthony Fauci, top allies to the president spent Monday working on ways to discredit the nation’s leading infectious-diseases expert even more.

    Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who informally advises Trump on economic matters, said on Monday evening that he is working on a new policy memo that would “go after Fauci,” not just for the doctor’s proclamations on the still-raging coronavirus pandemic, but for his decades of work for the U.S. government prior to the current crisis.

    “We are working on a memo that shows how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his entire career,” Moore told The Daily Beast, adding that he and his team at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity had been working on it for weeks. Moore, whose failures at political and economic prognostication are routine grist for his critics, added that he and his group intend to send their final product to the White House and Trump and to “publicize it,” once ready.

    Moore said that the current title of the memo is: “Dr. Wrong.”

    “It will document how often his predictions have been not just wrong, but in many cases, fabulously wrong…[and it’ll be] looking at his whole career of making predictions about disease, and trying to show a pattern,” he continued. “Fauci’s been ‘Dr. Doom’… and I don’t have a problem with him being ‘Dr. Doom,’ but I have a problem with him being wrong, wrong, wrong… He’s been a detriment to getting the economy reopened, with a lot of his false predictions.”

    Read more:
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-trump-ally-stephen-moore-preps-a-new-assault-on-dr-anthony-fauci

  7. Anonymous
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 7:20 am | Permalink

    Just before the Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications posted the image Mark shared above, the White House Press Secretary said, “And to the notion that there’s opposition research and that there’s Fauci versus the President, it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  8. Wobblie
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 7:45 am | Permalink

    Aloha, this is good news

    https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-first-antigen-test-help-rapid-detection-virus-causes

  9. Demetrius
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 7:59 am | Permalink

    I don’t trust Wollery at all. When it comes to health advice, I’m sticking with Pat Sajak.

  10. Bob
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 8:30 am | Permalink

    One of my favorite musicians just recorded this and I found it incredibly moving so I thought I’d share. I recommend everything Chandler does.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C-z8NW-yCU8

  11. Eel
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 8:57 am | Permalink

    Bob, have found the anti-Money Power Trio. Congratulations!

  12. iRobert
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 9:07 am | Permalink

    There are 75,000 people in Brazil pretending to be dead just to make our dear President Trump look bad. I wonder how the Democrats coordinated that hoax. And there are another half million around the world doing the same. It’s diabolical.

  13. Kit
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 1:48 pm | Permalink

    Did anyone listen to Naturally Stoned? It really changed my perception of Wollery.

  14. site admin
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 3:21 pm | Permalink

    This post originally ended with the following:

    And, yes, more people — like this 30 year old that I was just reading about in Texas — are surely going to die as a result of this new campaign on the part of the White House.

    Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said "I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it's not."https://t.co/d5WRDyDCKb— Mark Maynard (@MarkAMaynard) July 14, 2020

    It was removed, however, after reading this piece in Wired. While a 30 year old did die in Texas, and a nurse did report being told that this person had died after attending a Covid party, there’s no evidence that such a party took place.

  15. Demetrius
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 4:22 pm | Permalink

    So now we have a Trump Administration official openly mocking and attacking one of the nation’s foremost experts on the pandemic – not to mention one who is a leading member of their own COVID-19 task force.

    Regardless of how anyone feels about the virus, or masks, or Fauci himself – you have to ask yourself: Why would any Presidential administration behave this way!? Moreover, in what other business or professional organization would this kind of behavior be allowed to continue, let alone be condoned?

    At a time when many people are desperately hoping for genuine leadership, and seeking reliable information, the Trump Administration clown-show response to this crisis just continues to devolve. What a disgrace …

    NYT (07/14/20) Aide Posts Cartoon Mocking Fauci as White House Denies Undermining Him

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/fauci-scavino-cartoon-white-house.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  16. Wobblie
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 7:04 pm | Permalink

    Aloha, Trump seems to be learning from DeSantis. Controlling the flow of information is essential in any power struggle. Moving the locus of information from an agency run by technocrats to a Department run by your own political appointees is essential.

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/507321-white-house-tells-hospitals-to-bypass-cdc-on-covid-data-reporting

  17. Wobblie
    Posted July 14, 2020 at 10:37 pm | Permalink

    Aloha, meanwhile Congressional Democrats under St. Nancy produce bill to bail out lobbyist, employers and landlords. Workers, tenants and uninsured, well not so much. Once again the Democrats will be negotiating with the Senate having already given up on most of the Democrats constituents. Such losers.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/12/no-excuse-house-dems-unveil-1815-page-bill-would-bail-out-corporate-lobbyists-omits?fbclid=IwAR1feKM4Au0GJLF9QhBMDlr5P2QgbF-xRLryIIq9I90rdQ4u8PwznSMbTMQ

  18. John Brown
    Posted July 15, 2020 at 7:35 am | Permalink

    Fauci is finally going rogue. Here he is on Crooked Media with Michigan’s own celebrity Muslim doctor, Abdul El-Sayed. Thats gotta be a finger in the eye of the traitorous white evangelical christo fascists!

    https://crooked.com/podcast/dr-fauci/

  19. Lynne
    Posted July 15, 2020 at 9:42 am | Permalink

    I haven’t read the bill but fwiw, it makes sense to me to bail out landlords. We had an affordable housing crisis in this country even before COVID. The last thing you want are a bunch of landlords to go under because they can’t pay their bills. However, I will also point out that one really good way to help landlords is by giving rent relief to tenants by actually paying their rent for them during these hard times.

    I just went to a Zoom author event with Abdul El-Sayed. He wrote his book about healthcare before COVID but I know it is going to be an interesting read anyhow! I ordered it at the event so it should get here any day! [Healing Politics 9781419743023]

One Trackback

  1. […] this happened at roughly the same time Trump re-tweeted a post from Chuck Woolery about how the CDC was “lying” about COVID-19 to hurt the President’s reelection chances.] I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s going on here, but it seems as though, […]

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