The problem with the Babylon Bee, the right-leaning Christian satire website that functions as a corrective to the Onion’s on-the-nose liberalism, is that it’s only a matter of time before its headlines become reality.
Take this piece, from April of 2023: “Fauci Says He Never Locked Anything Down And Has Never Heard Of COVID.” Quoth the Bee:
“COVID? I’ve never even heard of such a thing! What is COVID? That sounds made up!” said the former NIAID Director and COVID advisor to the President. “And I certainly had nothing to do with locking down schools and destroying kids’ learning and development for over a year. What kind of monster would do something like that? You must have me confused with someone else.”
It only took a year and change, but that more or less summed up Fauci’s testimony before Congress, which ended with a public hearing this week. In it, the man who once claimed “I represent science” like he was Judge Dredd proclaiming “I am the law!” sounded infinitely more equivocal about his role in demanding lockdown and social distancing measures over COVID and claimed that he’d never called the lab leak hypothesis an out-and-out conspiracy theory.
Moreover, the figurehead who led the charge against anyone who dared question “the science” admitted that the six-foot rule was basically pulled out of nowhere, that there was no solid evidence for masking kids and that he didn’t know that any vaccine was 100 percent effective, but that, as The Wall Street Journal, the noted “durability of protection was more limited than researchers anticipated.”
That’s quite a mea culpa for Mr. I-Represent-Science. So, forgive and forget? Not even close, says podcaster Joe Rogan, who noted that the NIAID director and his coterie of COVID apparatchiks, at the height of their power, were demonizing practically everyone who wasn’t spewing their line.
During a Wednesday episode of Rogan’s podcast, the noted COVID policy dissident went off on Fauci first for claiming that his wife and children were facing harassment over his controversial stances.
After playing the clip about the threats that Fauci received, Rogan noted to guest Tony Hinchcliffe how the good doctor and his peeps “blamed podcasters.”
“They blamed podcasters and they said that we’re responsible for 200 to 300,000 deaths,” Rogan said.
Do you like Joe Rogan?
Which, as you may remember, made Rogan the subject of a very long Two-Minutes Hate by the mainstream media during the COVID winter of our discontent back in the day.
And, as Rogan pointed out, it’s not like he was particularly responsible for creating skepticism over the efficacy of the COVID vaccine — skepticism which, as it so happens, wasn’t unwarranted — but he was one of the few willing to give voice to it. Instead, he said, Fauci’s crowd should share the blame.
“Hey, man, you made it!” Rogan said. “First of all, don’t blame us … you made it. You f***ing made it. You funded it, you were part of the research.”
“And he was the main salesman on the air every day when we were watching the news,” Hinchcliffe noted. “Because there was nothing else. We wanted updates, we wanted to see when things were going to open, if any positive news was there, and we had him.”
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
And, yes, he really did say podcasters and other COVID vaccine skeptics were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths:
Joe Rogan DESTROYS Fauci After Blaming Unvaxed for 300K Deaths
Tony Fauci recently said the unvaccinated were “responsible” for an “additional 200,000 to 300,000 deaths” in America.
Well, Joe Rogan now has some words for Mr. Fauci.
“Hey, man, you made it, first of all. Don’t… pic.twitter.com/ZObqEngatI
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) June 6, 2024
Remember, too, that this is the specific podcaster that the Biden administration weaponized the U.S. government to go after during the darkest days of COVID.
In 2022, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki all but mentioned Rogan by name when she said the White House wanted “all major tech platforms” to “be responsible and be vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as COVID-19. And that certainly includes Spotifly [sic].”
Spotify — no L — is, of course, the platform that distributes Rogan’s show. This was all but a call from the podium at 1600 Pennsylvania for censorship. And the thing is, Rogan was right more often than not in being skeptical. At the very least, he had a better batting average than Dr. Fauci, Psaki, Joe Biden or anyone else who tried to force jabs into the arms of reluctant Americans — in some cases by the force majeure of the federal government — when those jabs, as it turned out, didn’t protect nearly as well as they had been sold.
Fauci helped shepherd the vaccination development and rollout, was responsible in large part for social distancing guidelines and masking he now wants to distance himself from, and blamed anyone who disagreed with his hardline stance for threats made against him.
Give him another few months and perhaps he’ll go full Babylon Bee, claiming that there was never any disease called COVID and the misinformation merchants pushing that line are responsible for literally thousands of crank calls to his house, asking if he’s got Prince Albert in a can and then telling Fauci to let him out of lockdown. Considering the rate reality catches up with satire these days, it’s only a matter of time.
