We're always tabbing, life's for clicking, yeah, that's our philosophy ...
2020: The Science™ is settled
— RazörFist (@RazorFist) July 30, 2026
2021: Trust the Science™
2022: Sorry you lost your job for not trusting The Science™
2023: We have recalled The Science™ from the market
2026: The Science™ pleads the 5th
Ed: The Science™ is an authoritarian cult with Anthony Fauci as its high priest. Real science allows itself to be challenged and tested. Fauci hasn't done actual science for decades.
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Matt Taibbi: This ought to have marked a dramatic and final end to years of hagiographic worship of the man, and commenced a long overdue decision to investigate science’s role in causing the pandemic.
No luck. The reaction to Wednesday’s hearing makes clear that there is no amount of evidence that will move half of the American population off its religious devotion to this invidious huckster-narcissist whose reckless behavior endangered the world. Nothing gets through. Documentary evidence doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the FBI and the Department of Energy point in that direction. Not even a desire for self-preservation — the investigation of Fauci and other scientists is a necessary precursor to learning how an engineered virus killed millions — will shake this segment of the population. ...
None of it will matter. Even after Fauci pleaded the fifth, news outlets across the country are covering the story as a “Republican pile-on.” This continues a pattern that began in the first days of the pandemic.
Ed: This demonstrates my previous point about The Science™ being a cult. It's also yet another piece of evidence that the national media will only cover scandals among the elite through the lens of how Republicans either pounce or seize upon it. That strategy insinuates that there is nothing to the scandal itself, and for an example, Taibbi himself sent this next item around as a retweet earlier today ...
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CNN's Abby Phillip argues to conservative Lydia Monyihan that there's no proof Fauci made any mistake or did anything "that was so wrong" during the COVID pandemic...
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2026
Moynihan clapped back: "So, the diaries are quite illuminating because he was writing one thing at the same time… pic.twitter.com/CZGRxSpkMD
"So, the diaries are quite illuminating because he was writing one thing at the same time that he was saying something very different publicly. He was extremely dismissive, for instance, of the origins of COVID at the same time that he was saying, I don't think this is from the wet market. That's just one example."
Ed: Fauci was also jotting down all of his many personal interactions with CNN hosts and reporters, which is why Phillip refused to discuss the diaries at all before yesterday's testimony.
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Glenn Reynolds: Well, I will survive the shock of that blow, but it struck me — after all those years of disagreeing on politics, this was the straw that broke Jarvis’s back? Anthony Fauci? Especially now, when he’s the butt of self-incrimination jokes? In front of Congress, Fauci wouldn’t even say what color his tie was. (I’m trying to talk one of my distiller friends into putting out a limited run of Fauci whiskey, with the slogan “Take the Fifth!”)
Why Fauci, and why now?
I think the answer is that Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.
Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top. And their overreach is one of the things that gave us Trump 47.
Ed: For some reason, journalists seem particularly invested in the Expert Class. Is that because they emerge from the same progressive-indoctrination milieu in Academia? Is it because their access to the Expert Class makes them feel more validated and an auxiliary member of the clique? Or just flat-out snobbery? Perhaps the answer is ... yes.
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You can't hate these people enough. And you can thank @nytimes for introducing the editorializin "baseless," "conspiracy," and "without evidence" into its reporting on a daily basis. https://t.co/erR8lJbkPO
— Michael Walsh (@TheAmanuensis) July 30, 2026
Ed: The fall of Fauci is also the humiliation of his media sycophants. Small wonder they're all trying to ignore the diaries, or covering them with their usual Republicans Pounce!™ spin.
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Alan Dershowitz: There is of course a price to pay in the court of public opinion for invoking the Fifth Amendment in response to hundreds of questions. Opportunistic politicians are eager to cite the number of times a witness has invoked the privilege, without explaining that there is no real difference between invoking it once and continuing to invoke it as for every question. This tactic was used commonly during the McCarthy era, when witnesses refused even to give their names or dates of birth. Similarly, Dr. Fauci refused to answer questions about the color of his tie for fear that he might be waiving his Fifth Amendment right as to other questions.
So whether you like dr Fauci or not, all Americans who care about const rights should be supporting his fifth amendment right to refuse to incriminate himself.
The fact that Dr. Fauci was within his constitutional rights does not mean that he is out of trouble. The congressional committee may well recommend that he be held in contempt. And congress may vote to hold him in contempt. The Trump Justice department could indict him and he would have to litigate these issues. Although there is no guarantee that he will win, the law seems clearly to be on his side. Moreover it may take a considerable amount of time for this case to work its way through congress and the courts.
If the committee were seriously interested in learning the facts rather than going after dr Fauci, it could recommend that congress bestow total immunity on dr Fauci up until the present. This would not give him immunity from a perjury prosecution if he were to testify falsely, but it would immunize him from all other crimes and deny him the right to invoke the fifth amendment. But congress seems more interested in Fauci’s blood than in his truthful testimony.
Ed: I'm not convinced by this argument. Fauci already has immunity through the preemptive pardon that Biden issued to Fauci. Dersh clearly knocked this one off quickly, as the grammar shows, but it's still an interesting perspective, especially coming from a con-law expert.
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Deborah Birx from her memoir, explaining how "two weeks to flatten the curve" was just marketing for harsh, months-long lockdowns that she was really planning:
— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) July 30, 2026
"On Monday and Tuesday [March 9th and 10th, 2020]…we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I…
... I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. … No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them."
Ed: Worth noting that Birx doesn't have a presidential pardon. I wonder whether she'll be back to testify before Rand Paul's committee. Maybe she'll volunteer, since she sounded rather reasonable when speaking to CBS News ...
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CBS News: The former White House coordinator of the COVID Task Force says the contentious Senate hearing that put Dr. Anthony Fauci and his diary under scrutiny shows there is still "persistent anger" over the government's handling of the pandemic.
In an interview on CBS News' "The Takeout," Dr. Deborah Birx said she thought Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who was Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor during the pandemic, "got it the most right for all of us." He wondered, she said, "Did I get the balance right between saving lives and preserving people's livelihoods?"
"That is a very deep question, and I think what you heard today is still persistent anger over that question not being answered adequately for most Americans," Birx told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett.
"We've got to get to that answer, and we have to have a better way forward than this," Birx said.
Ed: Being honest all along would have been a good start.
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I'm not a racist. I'm a culturalist
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) July 30, 2026
I believe some cultures are superior to others
For example, I prefer cultures that do not encourage wife beating, paedophilia, clitorectomies, stoning and constant inflation of the male ego
I am also aware of the difference between… https://t.co/WNCRrzQvZi
I am also aware of the difference between Islamoscepticism and Islamophobia
Notice that hate does not come into this
Only moral preferences
Ed: Well put. Don't expect Cleese's colleagues in the British entertainment establishment to defend it.
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Alex Berenson at The Free Press: The process speaks to the way Democratic socialists like Mamdani view taxpaying citizens. The city decides what you owe; it is up to you to prove you don’t. To make matters worse, the city’s finance department published the entire list of residences it believes could be subject to the tax, effectively doxxing hundreds of thousands of equity-rich homeowners.
In Mamdani’s New York City, the medium is the message. Not only is he going to tax the rich, he is stoking hatred of his class enemies, including with a series of “Rental Rip-off” hearings soliciting grievances against landlords, and in a video filmed in April outside the Manhattan penthouse of billionaire Ken Griffin, CEO of investment firm Citadel, where Mamdani promised to collect pied-à-terre taxes on the $238 million property. Last week, true to form, the mayor issued a cheeky social media missive for pied-à-terre owners: “Check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs—because you’ve got mail.” The new tax, he warned, “is coming soon.” ...
In the end, the most telling part of this whole mess was the response on social media. When I posted about what had happened on X, it went viral, racking up almost five million views and a great deal of blowback. One user, whose X biography claims he is a “dad, lawyer, progressive, and former 2020 Bernie delegate,” wrote: “My Mommy owns a townhouse that’s worth upwards of $8 million dollars, and the government is making me FILL OUT A FORM. I am deeply oppressed. Boo hoo for me.”
Ed: This is an interesting essay, in part because Berenson doesn't actually oppose the idea of a pied-à-terre tax. I think that's an unfortunate concession, but it doesn't prevent Berenson from correctly analyzing what Mamdani has in mind with it. It's all about class warfare, resentment, and envy, which is exactly what drives socialism and communism.
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Michael Ramirez: Mamdani Lies 07-27-26, by @Ramireztoons https://t.co/KeV4AAxYkn
— Michael Ramirez (@Ramireztoons) July 30, 2026
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RELATIVE ATTRACTION: We can confirm that Troy Jackson and his longtime partner are second cousins.
— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 30, 2026
They have two children together https://t.co/L9i3ALy7Wt pic.twitter.com/OvtA6PVOrC
Ed: Technically speaking, the risks of genetic issues are pretty low at this level of consanguinity. On the other hand ... yeeeeeesh. And just like that, we don't need to talk about Platner ever again.
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Last night's lyric: "Dear Diary" by the Moody Blues, in 'honor' of America's most famous diarist these days. Not sure how many readers got that joke, however. Duane Patterson says it's a pretty deep cut, so ... Also, I will take the day off tomorrow, so there may not be another Final Word until Saturday. Enjoy!
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