Tony's Diary Package — page 707

to Covid-19.) "In your written statement, you say now is not the time to pull back on masking, physical distancing and avoiding congregate settings. When is the time? When do Americans get their freedom back?" Jordan noted angrily that "15 days of 'slow the spread' turned into one year of lost liberty." He made that sound like Fauci's fault, when the truth is that if more people, including Jordan and many of his constituents, had taken the "slow the spread" period more seriously, the year that followed it would probably have been much less brutal and significantly less deadly. But they were often too busy railing against Fauci to reform their own conduct. Jordan isn't some grandstanding outlier. He's an emblem and instrument of widespread fury within his party, where the demonization of Fauci hasn't just survived Donald Trump's presidency but metastasized since its end. Frank Bruni's Newsletter: Get a more personal take on politics, newsmakers and more with Frank's exclusive commentary every week. "Fauci" was a dirty word uttered from the stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in February. "Fauci" is a dirty word prevalent in conservative publications. In Breitbart News several days ago, Fauci was dismissively referred to as America's top "public health celebrity." "Fauci Fallacies at All-Time High" was a recent headline in The Washington Free Beacon. In the span of one week this month, National Review published articles titled "Anthony Fauci Has Worn Out His Welcome," "Anthony Fauci's Misadventures in Fortune-Telling" and "Another Dismal Sunday-Show Circuit for Dr. Fauci." Just a few days ago in The Washington Post, Dan Diamond mentioned Fauci antipathy in the opening paragraph of a report about people who refuse to get vaccinations against the coronavirus. The message from one focus group of such people, he noted, was that "if you're trying to win over skeptics, show us anyone besides Dr. Fauci." Philip Bump, one of Diamond's colleagues at The Post, correctly observed that "Fauci has become what Trump always wanted him to be: the scapegoat for unpopular government recommendations." But it's even bigger and weirder than that. "He doesn't work for us," the writer Naomi Wolf said on Fox News on Monday, referring to Fauci and reacting to a $1 million prize given to him by a philanthropy in Israel as a recognition of his, yes, public service. She cast the money as evidence that he was "so conflicted" and not sufficiently guided by concern for the "public health of the American people." There's a lot of this out there, and all of it is out there. We live in times that are viciously partisan and oratorically sloppy -- but Fauci is neither. He's consistently cool, answering the rants of Jordan and others with expert insights and logical analyses.