After a primary season marked by socialist wins — and a party that can&#8217;t seem to stop the dramatic lurch to the Left — Democrats are losing the public relations game with average voters, and they&#8217;re losing big.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten detailed the Democratic Party&#8217;s flagging favorability numbers during a Tuesday morning segment — and although he was also careful to note that President Donald Trump was not faring any better in recent polls, he made it clear that Democrats still had some serious work to do ahead of November&#8217;s midterm elections.
&#8220;Donald Trump&#8217;s political brand ain&#8217;t too hot to trot these days,&#8221; Enten explained, holding his nose for emphasis when he added, &#8220;But I gotta tell you, P-U when it comes to the Democratic brand.&#8221;
&#8220;The net favorability rating of the Democratic Party — you know, back in 2018, when Democrats during the first Trump presidency, right? When they were able to win back control of the House? They were even,&#8221; Enten said.
Enten&#8217;s tone was incredulous as he dropped the comparison to 2026: &#8220;Twenty-five points underwater! Oof. Oof. You know, the Dem brand, it&#8217;s not too good these days, it&#8217;s not too good. It kind of smells like a New York sidewalk in the summer.&#8221;
But what Enten did not address was the wide ideological chasm between the Democrats who ran — and ultimately flipped a number of seats — in the 2018 midterms and the Democrats who have secured primary wins in the 2026 cycle.
Among the 2018 winners were two who eventually switched their party affiliation either to Republicans or independent: New Jersey&#8217;s Rep. Jeff Van Drew — now a Republican — and Arizona&#8217;s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who declared her affiliation to be independent in 2022. Others, like Reps. Max Rose (D-NY), Antonio Delgado (D-NY), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) were somewhat moderate in their voting records.
Just eight years later, the big primary wins have gone to a number of far-Left candidates who openly attack Israel and embrace socialism — and even a few who are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Michigan&#8217;s Democratic Senate nominee <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dsa-whistleblower-says-hell-do-everything-he-can-to-elect-mike-rogers">Abdul El-Sayed</a>, for example, proudly campaigned alongside antisemitic communist and Mao Zedong superfan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-gives-el-sayed-a-chance-to-renounce-hasan-piker-he-does-the-opposite">Hasan Piker</a> — and he was not the only one to do so. DSA-aligned candidates won primaries in New York on the coattails of Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
And as more moderate Democrats lose to primary challenges from the far-Left, a number of others have opted to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/panic-sets-in-dems-tailspin-as-they-realize-the-hostile-socialist-takeover-already-started">fall in line</a> in an attempt to save their own skins, defending the rise of socialism by claiming that the Democrat tent is big enough for everyone.

Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Holds Rally In Detroit With Sen. Bernie Sanders And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Dems Are Losing The Public Relations War As Party Lurches Left

The Normies Don't Like Socialism, Dems Hardest Hit: Poll

Democratic Socialists Of America

Democrats

Donald Trump

Harry Enten

Media

Politics

Polls

Socialism

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) handed her party a problem it spent Sunday morning refusing to answer when she laughed off a slate of far-left policy positions as the excesses of &#8220;Woke 1.&#8221;
Two of the biggest Sunday shows put Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s remark to Democratic guests as a loyalty test, and both guests gave a near-identical non-answer. NBC&#8217;s Kristen Welker and CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper each raised it on &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukfmKkYwS4">Meet the Press</a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCBVnEyVdwQ">State of the Union</a>,&#8221; respectively.
Welker put the question to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) directly, quoting Ocasio-Cortez and asking whether he agreed.
&#8220;She said &#8216;Woke 1 was crazy,&#8217; effectively suggesting some progressive views just went too far in the 2020s,&#8221; Welker said. &#8220;Do you agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Woke 1 was crazy?&#8221;
&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know what these labels mean,&#8221; Khanna replied, immediately pivoting to a recitation of his own record: &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what I&#8217;ve always stood for. I have never been for defunding police.&#8221; He went on to volunteer that he has &#8220;called for abolishing ICE.&#8221;
Welker followed up by asking about Francesca Hong — the Madison democratic socialist who narrowly lost Wisconsin&#8217;s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday — and the resurfaced post in which she called for getting rid of Thanksgiving. &#8220;Did that kind of rhetoric hurt the progressive cause?&#8221; she asked.
Khanna refused to give an inch. &#8220;I really feel bad for what happened to Francesca. And I know it&#8217;s fashionable to distance yourself. I am not,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I was proud to endorse her and she&#8217;s far more than the caricature that was presented.&#8221;
Notably, Ocasio-Cortez herself never endorsed Hong. Asked in the same ABC News <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwAnMLBSOw">interview</a> that produced the &#8220;Woke 1&#8221; line whether she would, she said her focus was &#8220;winning back the Congress&#8221; — putting her in line with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the national Democratic Socialists of America, all of whom stayed out. Khanna did not.
On &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; Tapper raised an almost identical line of questioning with Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), referencing Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s comments and pressing Moore for his view.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Democrat Governor of Maryland Wes Moore plays dumb when asked if Democrats went too far by calling to defund the police:
“I said I don’t know what woke 1 is, but frankly I don&#8217;t know what woke 2 or woke 3 is either.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/PFVN265qYw">pic.twitter.com/PFVN265qYw</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/2088985603874463944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to have acknowledged the overreach of the 2020 era of progressivism last week. She said, quote, &#8216;Woke 1 was crazy,'&#8221; Tapper said. &#8220;You were asked about that. You said you didn&#8217;t know what Woke 1 was. So I&#8217;ve been trying to figure out how to ask this question. There&#8217;s no official definition. I think Woke 1 generally refers to what are now viewed as excesses of the progressive movement — defund the police, a far-left view of the world that views the world in terms of only oppressor and oppressee, language policing, holiday policing, cancel culture positions that turned off a lot of middle-of-the-road voters. What is your take on that era, even if that wasn&#8217;t part of how you ran or thought or governed — and what does the Democratic Party need to do if they hope to win outside of blue states and congressional districts?&#8221;
Moore took a position almost identical to Khanna&#8217;s, replying, &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s funny, it&#8217;s true — I said I don&#8217;t know what Woke 1 is, but frankly, I don&#8217;t know what Woke 2 or Woke 3 is either.&#8221; Moore then pivoted to gas prices, recounting a conversation with a woman at a Delmarva Shorebirds game who told him she can&#8217;t afford to drive to her doctor&#8217;s appointments. Tapper did not follow up.
Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-has-an-excuse-for-the-lefts-most-radical-woke-1-era">further popularized the phrase</a> during an August 9 appearance on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; where she too was attempting to put some distance between herself and the less popular policies of the far left. Anchor Jonathan Karl had asked her about Hong&#8217;s record. The line wasn&#8217;t hers: she borrowed it from New York City Councilman Chi Ossé, a fellow socialist who deployed it in May while explaining away his own 2021 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/nyregion/nyc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-freezing-eggs.html">declaration</a> that &#8220;a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the Council.&#8221;
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,&#8217;” Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwAnMLBSOw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Karl</a> during an interview. “What’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
She went on to blame the pandemic for the era&#8217;s excesses while insisting the debates it produced were worthwhile.
&#8220;I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful,&#8221; she said.

Maryland Gov. Moore And Utah Gov. Cox Speak At National Press Club On Bipartisanship

Democrats Suddenly Can’t Define ‘Woke’ After AOC Says It Was ‘Crazy’

Dems Scramble To Break Free Of AOC's 'Woke 1' Label

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Jake Tapper

Kristen Welker

Ro Khanna

Wes Moore

Woke Culture

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins gave Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed a clear opportunity to distance himself from antisemitic communist streamer Hasan Piker — and El-Sayed doubled down instead.
Collins, while speaking to El-Sayed on Wednesday evening, asked him to respond to comments from Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) warning him to back away from Piker: &#8220;I can&#8217;t come together with someone if you are willing to embrace people that love Hamas, or that think America deserved 9/11. I think that&#8217;s reasonable.&#8221;
&#8220;In Trump&#8217;s words, &#8216;What a lovely gentleman,'&#8221; El-Sayed said in response to Fetterman&#8217;s comments.
&#8220;I mean, he said that you need to renounce people like the Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who was out there campaigning with you, who was out there in Michigan on Monday night, I believe last night as well. Do you have any plans to do that?&#8221; Collins pressed.
&#8220;Look, I&#8217;m less focused on folks who are campaigning with me, more focused on the folks I&#8217;m campaigning to,&#8221; El-Sayed said, not directly answering the question but still making it clear that he had no intention of backing away from Piker. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s important to stay in touch with the folks you want to elect you. I think that&#8217;s clearly what&#8217;s gone wrong with Senator Fetterman, it&#8217;s clear he probably doesn&#8217;t spend much time in Pennsylvania, because he was campaigning with Bernie Sanders and now wants to renounce Bernie Sanders. I don&#8217;t know if he still thinks he&#8217;s a Democrat or not, I&#8217;m hoping to get to the U.S. Senate and maybe we can hash that conversation out in person.&#8221;
Fetterman is not alone in calling for El-Sayed to renounce Piker. Gun control activist Fred Guttenberg weighed in on the issue, commenting on Piker&#8217;s reaction to those pushing El-Sayed to move to the center to win the Senate seat.
&#8220;Everyone being like, &#8216;Abdul has a f*ck-ton of work to do mending bridges,&#8217; here&#8217;s the f*cking take nuke for you: You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of sh*t. You literally called the dude a f*cking terrorist for months on end,&#8221; Piker said on his election night livestream.
&#8220;Mazel Tov @AbdulElSayed for winning a Democratic primary with a minority of Democratic voters. You will need everyone of your voters and @HaleyforMI voters to win a general. For that to be possible, you will need to move on from Piker. Guessing you won&#8217;t and I won&#8217;t be surprised when you lose,&#8221; Guttenberg <a href="https://x.com/fred_guttenberg/status/2085090821506764957">shot back</a>.
And there are more, as one MS NOW host noted: &#8220;Some Democrats I&#8217;ve talked to &#8230; on the plane this morning, a guy said to me, &#8216;I&#8217;m anxious &#8230;&#8217; he said, &#8216;I voted for Haley Stevens &#8230; in fact, if he wins, I will be voting for MIKE ROGERS.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 WOW! MSNOW is now PANICKING after Democrat voters told her they&#8217;re voting Mike Rogers (R) because Abdul El Sayed (D) became the MI Senate nominee
&#8220;Some Democrats I&#8217;ve talked to&#8230;on the plane this morning a guy said to me, &#8216;I&#8217;m anxious&#8230;&#8217; he said, &#8216;I voted for Haley… <a href="https://t.co/MweVr8G4bb">https://t.co/MweVr8G4bb</a> <a href="https://t.co/iuEXdhiAyL">pic.twitter.com/iuEXdhiAyL</a>
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085096708204290525?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 5, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Michigan Democratic Senate Primary Winner Abdul El-Sayed Holds News Conference Day After Primary Win

CNN Gives El-Sayed A Chance To Renounce Hasan Piker — He Does The Opposite

Abdul El-Sayed

Democratic Socialism

Hasan Piker

Kaitlan Collins

Michigan

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten warned on Thursday that Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) was likely to cost his party a seat in the upcoming midterm elections.
Enten laid out the polling in Miller&#8217;s race showing his standing has fallen sharply since <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-moreno-accuses-max-miller-of-abusing-his-daughter-after-congressman-breaks-silence">accusations</a> of domestic violence surfaced and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), Miller&#8217;s former father-in-law, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-senator-says-family-dispute-put-him-in-seventh-level-of-hell">called on</a> him to resign.
&#8220;Max Miller is going to cost his party — most likely cost his party a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives when we&#8217;re talking about the politics of this,&#8221; Enten said, &#8220;You can see quite well on the Kalshi prediction market chance to win Ohio [District] 7, look at this, Poindexter, the Democrat, 37% on July 25th, over the last few weeks his chances way up to 70%.&#8221;
In contrast, he added, &#8220;Max Miller&#8217;s chances, look at this, falling down through the floor, falling into Lake Erie, going from 64% now down to 30%. What seemed like a race that was favoring Miller is now favoring the Democrat Poindexter as this scandal has hit the press.&#8221;
CNN host John Berman jumped in to point out the fact that the new poll numbers had only come ten days after the first — and that was how quickly the race had turned on Miller.
&#8220;Is there a way to measure the impact that scandals have on House races?&#8221; Berman asked.
Enten laid out more historical data, noting that, on average, 85% of House members succeeded in reelection bids — but for those mired in scandals at the time of the election, the success rate dropped to 57%.
&#8220;Scandals matter. Scandals matter. I know a lot of people think nothing matters, but scandals still do matter in our politics,&#8221; Enten added.
He went on to say that another important factor was how much interest there was in a particular scandal — and the numbers were not working in Miller&#8217;s favor on that point either. According to Google Trends, searches in Miller&#8217;s district for information about him and the still-unfolding scandal were up 3200% over the previous two weeks.
Miller has repeatedly claimed that there is nothing to the accusations against him — but his attempts to interview his way out of public scrutiny have thus far been unsuccessful.

Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) speaks

Pollster: Max Miller Is In Trouble With A Capital ‘T’

Pollster: Max Miller Is In Trouble With A Capital 'T'

Bernie Moreno

Max Miller

Ohio

polling

Rep. Max Miller

Scandals

“I wasn’t part of the problem” during Covid-19, insisted CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday. “Let me just say, for the record, that I am not saying that the entire Covid reaction was accurate. It was a scary time, and people made mistakes.” Bash later added that “What we were doing in Covid… is getting the best information, the best science that we can and putting it out there.”
But Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary shows that the media was more interested in pushing specific narratives and promoting Fauci than it was in getting the “best information” to the public. On April 17, 2021, for example, Bash herself texted Fauci, “I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I&#8230;. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday – no one would have blamed you if you said simply ‘Mr. Jordan, go f&#8212; yourself.’”
Bash was referring to a House Oversight Committee hearing in which Representative Jim Jordan pointed out many of the “mistakes” Bash now admits were made.
The next day, Bash sent Fauci another text “pointing out that Vanity Fair recently had a headline that said: Jim Jordan trips over his own asshole trying to debate Anthony Fauci.”
Since Senator Rand Paul released Fauci’s diary, journalists have claimed that he had no real authority to impose lockdowns or mandates, suggesting it wasn’t their job to hold him accountable. “Dr. Fauci did not have the authority to force anyone to do anything,” the New York Times <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1de9a5f6-7f9b-447d-a6cf-454f3904954f?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">stated</a>.
But his diary shows how members of the media worked to help Fauci win policy debates against President Donald Trump. As early as March 11, 2020, Fauci was aware that the press was heavily on his side, noting, “the CNN commentators (Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, David Gergon, David Gregory) all discussed me as the adult in the room and the person [we] should all trust.”
In this way, the media worked to undermine the authority of the democratically elected president by upholding Fauci, an unelected bureaucrat, as the ultimate expert and truth-teller. While today they claim that Fauci had no power, six years ago they insisted he be granted nearly unlimited power.
When Trump said Fauci disagreed with a decision in May 2020, Fauci noted that “Chris Cuomo, and Jake Tapper are trying to clarify this in my defense on their shows.” In October 2020, Kaitlan Collins contacted Fauci about a campaign ad and tweeted out a statement for him, which “went totally viral on twitter [sic] and several networks and cable reported it.”
Fauci had personal relationships with several members of the press. On April 13, 2020, he noted that CNN’s Jake Tapper called him “to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.” On July 1, 2020, Fauci wrote that he had dinner with Tapper and his wife. “Terrific couple. Friendship building.” In October, they had dinner again at Fauci’s home.
Journalists didn’t try to hide their affection for Fauci. Chris Cuomo “gave a wonderful explanation to viewers how close and good friends we are and how I checked in on him every night including weekends for weeks during his COVID illness,” Fauci noted in May 2020. “Never saw something like that on TV.”
It’s no coincidence that much of Fauci’s diary is spent recording his various appearances and interviews. Under pressure from the media, political leaders deferred to Fauci when crafting policy, including on issues like school closures, his diary <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/145efd6c-86b7-482c-b4b8-f7635507796e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">shows</a>.
Rather than, as Bash claimed, sharing the “best science” with viewers, TV and print journalists aired Fauci’s views without examining the evidence. If they had examined it, they would have reported on the publicly available data Fauci privately discussed in his diary. Fauci knew, for example, that vaccines <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/85c12387-d7b7-4030-9098-eb5104e7c211?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">did not prevent</a>infection and transmission and that natural immunity <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2b5df709-c1c1-49d3-90cc-0b2576248bcc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">was protective</a>. These facts made vaccine mandates unnecessary, yet he <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4ac32575-f61a-43e6-a09b-a020e21d056e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relentlessly</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a2d50c08-d88d-42bf-bfd7-7a0b31cd3cc4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">sought</a> to implement them.
Years later, news outlets have failed to accurately report on Covid, even retrospectively. For instance, they ignored documents <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4d90b8be-87d4-4ddb-ab36-06c0df3989fc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">revealing</a> that the CDC received concerning reports about vaccine-induced myocarditis in 2021, and that the CDC Director lied about it. And in 2023, mainstream media outlets did not cover extensive records showing that Fauci and other scientists initially believed Covid originated from a lab in Wuhan before <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/071fc69c-b472-40f6-bb19-2e2b08a7a310?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">collaborating</a> to dismiss the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
While news anchors like Bash may still believe that Covid was well-managed despite a few “mistakes,” it is by now undeniable that their preferred policies created enormous backlash not just against Fauci personally, but against medical institutions, the Democratic Party, and the media itself.
Much of this backlash is due to the kind of duplicitousness displayed in Fauci’s diary. Scientists and officials privately acknowledged the realities of gain-of-function research, vaccine-induced myocarditis, and natural immunity, all while giving the public entirely different messages and using censorship to enforce compliance.
The liberal media’s response to the Fauci hearing shows a broad lack of understanding, or lack of desire to understand. With defending Covid lockdowns and mandates still a political liability, it would be strategically wise for journalists to avoid doubling down. So why do they continue to insist that criticism of Fauci is baseless? Why can’t they reckon with what really happened during Covid?
In 2020 and 2021, The New York Times and Washington Post published article after article in support of school closures. They claimed Covid could <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/87cced0f-80ec-4740-b2f5-0309b35815e1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“soar”</a> if schools reopened, that it was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/46423805-72cc-495a-97eb-3f1831066983?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">risky</a> for children to play together, and that virtual learning provided black families a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ee52dc86-25b1-4acc-a595-f959dd34929a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relief</a> from racism. They published headlines like <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c96a5af3-f7d9-4416-93f3-35fe13a398f9?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Can We Stop Telling ‘Corona Kids’ How Little They Are Learning?,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d349090c-ca97-4d2a-a95b-6a23e88b0142?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Racist Effects of School Reopening During the Pandemic—By a Teacher,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c272127a-2785-4a4b-bf44-b16f84308569?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss?”</a> and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a1c9c63a-ac68-4be5-a707-431dbd7c1ef1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Actually Wearing a Mask Can Help Your Child Learn.”</a>
This was all despite the fact that European nations had safely reopened their public schools in 2020 and education ministers in the European Union announced that they saw no negative consequences from reopening schools. As David Zweig <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c387c76e-9078-450c-8c6c-5193f63a498a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">points out</a>, no one in legacy media reported on this.
At first, when the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, China, many in the liberal media questioned the approach, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d7592799-bbab-40e9-bea6-9347ae1257c4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noting</a> that it would violate human rights and be ineffective. Democratic politicians <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/555f575b-3cbe-44fc-a08e-e8600245cfb1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">encouraged</a> people to go to Chinatown and said that concern about Covid was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/efee174c-e87b-49ff-9e9b-c09977d01ec7?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">racist</a>.
But when it became clear that Covid offered unprecedented power for the professional expert class, the media and the broader Left changed their approach. “Many progressives see the coronavirus response,” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1be47999-c7b5-4554-be92-3b6d21143db6?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noted</a> NPR in May 2020, “as a chance to prove that policies they support can work and should be made permanent… Now there is a crisis, and Democrats want to use this moment to remake the system.”
Covid could thus be used for social restructuring, locking in government spending, and continuously attacking Trump as a mass killer. Before Covid, Trump had remained politically resilient. In January 2020, the percentage of Americans satisfied with “the way things are going” went up to <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fe4735fd-16d0-4f6e-8a2c-39ab27d4d56a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">45 percent</a>, the highest since February 2005. And Trump had signaled that if he achieved a second term, he would take aim at many of the Left’s core achievements, including in the areas of education and immigration.
Covid offered a chance to thwart this trajectory while cementing the authority of the managerial class over democratic institutions in the name of “safety” and “saving lives.”
The Left equated wrongthink and “misinformation” with murder, justifying unprecedented censorship. When three epidemiologists from Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard simply suggested an alternative approach in the Great Barrington Declaration, the New York Times called it “dangerous” for not supporting lockdowns. Journalists denounced dissenters and “the unvaccinated” in increasingly dehumanizing terms.
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ae808a81-31bc-47b3-8e97-e7e4e1dc3086?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“I’m Furious at the Unvaccinated,”</a> one column was titled in The New York Times. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fed65b3d-1936-42f2-83dc-7137eeee445c?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Unvaxxed, Unmasked and Putting Our Kids at Risk,”</a> read another. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2da283db-7774-45c6-aa93-eecfce685cdf?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Unvaccinated Are a Risk to All of Us,”</a> a Bloomberg headline stated.
The unvaccinated, explained CNN’s Don Lemon, were <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/f578a6c0-ebb5-4da9-9611-15ef58896575?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“idiotic and nonsensical.” </a>It was time to “start shaming them” or “leave them behind,” he said. Wrote a columnist in the Los Angeles Times, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/8fe97ded-98ab-4af4-a043-f216a8f0c036?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but may be necessary.</a>” Others warned of “compassion fatigue” for the unvaccinated and platformed doctors who said they would refuse to treat them.
Liberal politicians who the media supported denounced their own citizens. President Joe Biden <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5a22104a-7e52-4313-a378-24e7e5884122?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">said</a> in the fall of 2021 that his “patience [was] wearing thin” and that we needed to “protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers.” He declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a8932eea-429a-4907-97e5-5b66354d89ed?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">warned</a> “the unvaccinated” that they would face a “winter of severe illness and death.”
“Do we tolerate these people?” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5ae06228-5b4f-4110-aade-80d5c82d7052?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">asked</a> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, about the unvaccinated. They “are very often misogynistic and racist.” French President Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ba52db55-af3a-4c3c-ae01-5c74e4e71974?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">vowed</a> to put “pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting… access [to] social activities.” Someone who refuses the Covid vaccine, he said, is “not a citizen.” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/347e4a6d-8101-4cd4-9e90-805d751c1172?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">Said</a> a commentator in The Washington Post, “Macron is right: It’s time to make life a living hell for anti-vaxxers.”
So-called “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-maskers” represented resistance to rule by experts, and their very survival was evidence that the experts, and the journalists who endorsed them, were wrong.
***
This is the first section of the author’s full essay. You can read the rest on Public <a href="https://www.public.news/p/journalists-are-still-defending-fauci">here</a> and <a href="https://www.public.news/">subscribe</a> to the newsletter.
Alex Gutentag is a Senior Editor for Public and writes about censorship, government abuse of power, and other topics. She has been a columnist for Tablet and a contributing editor for Compact. She is based in California.

Meet the Press – Season 73

COVID Bitter Clingers In The Media Will Never End Their Fauci Love Affair

Anthony Fauci

Chris Cuomo

COVID

Dana Bash

DW Opinion

House Oversight Committee

Justin Trudeau

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Embattled Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) sat down with CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper on Tuesday and responded to allegations of abusing his ex-wife and daughter with a series of evasive answers that often raised more questions than they resolved.
Miller has been accused of abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno — daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) — and their daughter, and his appearance on CNN was one of several public appearances the Ohio congressman made as he attempted to refute the accusations against him. But as Tapper questioned him, Miller offered very few concrete answers — and instead turned the questions on his former father-in-law.
Tapper began with a question about a &#8220;blue bunny doll&#8221; that Miller&#8217;s daughter took everywhere and asked whether Moreno had been telling the truth when he said Miller had refused to return it for two days: &#8220;If it&#8217;s true, that sounds like emotionally abusive behavior toward the toddler, to refuse to give into her when she can&#8217;t sleep without it.&#8221;
Without directly answering the question, Miller said that he agreed that &#8220;would be disturbing if the senator was telling the truth,&#8221; and then pivoted immediately. &#8220;However, he has taken two years to publicly acknowledge — for me to resign from my seat. Why is that, Jake?&#8221;
Then Miller alluded to damaging information he claimed to have on Moreno — about a &#8220;deeply and personal embarrassing matter&#8221; — and claimed Moreno had only called for his resignation because he feared Miller might share that information publicly on his livestream Sunday. Miller did not give any specifics on what that damaging information might be.
Tapper reminded Miller that he&#8217;d been asking about the blue bunny, asking again whether he&#8217;d held the toy &#8220;hostage.&#8221;
Miller denied that he had, and immediately pivoted again, telling Tapper that there had already been two investigations into him that had not resulted in charges. He said one investigation had found fault at a daycare center, and defended himself in the other case — which involved his daughter&#8217;s broken collarbone — by arguing that his wife had violated a custody agreement by taking her hurt child to the emergency room.
&#8220;When I was reported for child abuse for my daughter for a broken collarbone, my daughter was in my ex-wife&#8217;s care nine out of the last 11 days, and she took her to the emergency room, which is a contempt violation from our shared parenting plan,&#8221; Miller said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Rep. Max Miller: &#8220;When I was reported for child abuse of my daughter for a broken collarbone, my daughter was in my ex-wife&#8217;s care 9 out of the last 11 days and she took her to the emergency room, which is a contempt violation from our shared parenting plan.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/Gc05pX2g2t">pic.twitter.com/Gc05pX2g2t</a>
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/2084749681448374468?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Tapper continued to press, asking Miller about a Dropbox link he&#8217;d shared — ostensibly to provide evidence that cleared his name — which included a photo of his daughter in a state of undress. That link remained live for a day before it was pulled down and the image removed.
Noting that Miller&#8217;s lawyer has since fallen on the sword for that &#8220;mistake,&#8221; Tapper argued that it was &#8220;shockingly reckless&#8221; to allow that to happen in the first place.
Miller protested, explaining that the photo was part of evidence in a court case and wasn&#8217;t that inappropriate — and claimed that it was being blown out of proportion by media outlets chasing a good headline.
Tapper, clearly taken aback, asked how he could defend releasing such a photo — and Miller immediately claimed he wasn&#8217;t defending it.
&#8220;You just defended it!&#8221; Tapper replied.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
TAPPER: One of the files you released was an image of your daughter naked. It was available in that drop box for a day before it was removed. Your ex-wife&#8217;s attorney says it could quality as CSAM. That&#8217;s shockingly reckless behavior.
MAX MILLER: I wouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s shockingly… <a href="https://t.co/l8tSilKtu5">pic.twitter.com/l8tSilKtu5</a>
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/2084750725213532441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
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As the conversation continued, Tapper pressed Miller about his claims that his daughter had told him she didn&#8217;t want to return to her mother&#8217;s house. He then asked about competing claims from Emily Moreno, who said their daughter had said things like, &#8220;daddy kill you,&#8221; &#8220;daddy angry,&#8221; and &#8220;daddy&#8217;s house is scary.&#8221;
&#8220;Jake, I wish you could talk to my beautiful baby girl. She can&#8217;t string together sentences like that. She&#8217;s two and a half years old,&#8221; Miller protested.
&#8220;You just told me that she had said that she was scared to go to mommy&#8217;s house,&#8221; Tapper pushed back.
&#8220;She is. I have video of it,&#8221; Miller said.
&#8220;But now you&#8217;re saying that she&#8217;s not capable of saying ‘Daddy kill you?’ I mean, it seems like she&#8217;s either able to say one but not the other. That doesn&#8217;t make sense,&#8221; Tapper pointed out.
&#8220;Jake. To be very direct, this is incredibly disturbing,&#8221; Miller said, adding, &#8220;You have to look at the timing of everything that is taking place, right? What about due process?&#8221;
Tapper then noted that Miller had been accused of inappropriate — and even violent — behavior by other women prior to his ex-wife. Miller shrugged off one of the cases by saying he&#8217;d been &#8220;young,&#8221; and then suggested that the accounts were not credible because at least one of the women had not gone &#8220;on record&#8221; with her accusation.
&#8220;I guess the question is, are all three of these women who don’t know each other, are all three of them lying?&#8221; Tapper asked.
&#8220;Yes, it’s very easy, and I can tell you why,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;Every single time — and people have asked me, &#8216;What are you gonna do? Are you gonna drop out of this race? Are you gonna resign? Are you gonna get out before the deadline?&#8217; And my answer to you, Jake, is no. And I can tell you why. In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day, and people in the media very much like yourself and others said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the president of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
TAPPER: Hold on &#8212; hold on, &#8217;cause I&#8217;m not done with the list of women who have accused you of violence. Are all three of them lying?
REP. MAX MILLER: Yes. And I&#8217;m not getting out of the race because in 2016, President Donald J Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the… <a href="https://t.co/gf76bMnzB6">pic.twitter.com/gf76bMnzB6</a>
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/2084751783470002223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Miller also struggled to answer questions about his alleged illegal drug use when Tapper noted that he&#8217;d been inconsistent in his answers during his custody dispute with Moreno.
&#8220;Emily Moreno&#8217;s lawyers asked you a series of questions about past alleged incidents, and some of them you denied outright — &#8216;no, that&#8217;s not true,&#8217; &#8216;no, that&#8217;s not true&#8217; — and others you refused to answer at all, your lawyers claimed that they were not relevant.&#8221;
Among the questions Miller had refused to answer was whether or not he&#8217;d ever referred to the birth of his daughter as &#8220;setting my playground on fire,&#8221; as well as several related to illegal drug use.
&#8220;I can tell you that I never did any of those things, why can&#8217;t you?&#8221; Tapper asked, suggesting that his selective refusal to answer only made him look more suspicious. He then corrected himself, admitting to smoking marijuana &#8220;before it was legal.&#8221;
Miller sputtered briefly, saying he&#8217;d be &#8220;happy to&#8221; discuss those topics, but had not answered before because answering gave the question &#8220;credibility.&#8221;
&#8220;In the Mother Jones story, it says when you were picked up for drunk driving, you had ecstasy in your system. When is the last time you used illegal drugs?&#8221; Tapper asked.
&#8220;I mean, the last time — I don&#8217;t — I would have to say, I don&#8217;t know, several years ago. I don&#8217;t have a timeframe,&#8221; Miller replied.
&#8220;Two? 20?&#8221; Tapper pressed.
Miller then claimed, unsolicited, that if anyone ever found needles it was because he was using them for &#8220;testosterone therapy&#8221; — at which point he name-dropped War Secretary Pete Hegseth and his recent initiative to keep testosterone levels steady for male service members.

Ways and Means Treasury Priorities

Embattled GOP Rep Agreed To Live Interview. It Didn’t Go Well.

House of Representatives

House Republicans

And for his final act, Aaron Rodgers blasted Anthony Fauci on ESPN.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
&#8220;I&#8217;m pleading the Fifth 😂😂
You&#8217;ve gotta be kidding me&#8221; ~ <a href="https://x.com/AaronRodgers12?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AaronRodgers12</a> <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/PMSLive?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PMSLive</a> <a href="https://t.co/kg3y0uMxxR">pic.twitter.com/kg3y0uMxxR</a>
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) <a href="https://x.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/2084338121101983920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 3, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, ostensibly playing out his last season in the league, gave Pat McAfee a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aaron-rodgers-rips-into-fauci-during-live-on-espn">response</a> for the ages when asked how he&#8217;s feeling about the year ahead.
“I’m gonna plead the fifth. Like that absolute coward Tony Fauci. Absolute coward. Are you kidding me? &#8230; What are you scared of Tony? I thought you were science?”
WHAT ARE YOU SCARED OF, TONY. I felt that one in my chest. Black and gold, baby. That&#8217;s my quarterback.
But the 42-year-old veteran didn&#8217;t stop there. For his own two minutes of hate, he tore into &#8220;The Science,&#8221; the network covering it, and the gaslighting that came bundled with both:
<blockquote>How much time did they spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis&#8217;s wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? I bet they didn&#8217;t. &#8230; What are you gonna say about me now?</blockquote>
My heart rate spiked just typing that. The crowd was roaring. Somewhere in the back, a Yinzer was chanting &#8220;YES&#8221; like it was a third-down stop. The Terrible Towels were out in July. Their quarterback was finally getting his day in court, four years after the media was his judge, jury, and executioner, and he made the most of it.
When my kids ask why the Steelers are goated, I&#8217;m going to show them this clip. Not the Immaculate Reception, not Santonio Holmes’ Super Bowl toe-tap — this. The moment one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game looked into a camera and said, on behalf of everyone who got laughed out of the room for asking questions: I was right, and I&#8217;m not sorry.
And there was no better man to deliver it. Rodgers wasn&#8217;t vaccinated during the 2021 season; instead, he pursued alternative treatment under the supervision of a holistic doctor. He told reporters that August he&#8217;d been &#8220;immunized;” a precise, deliberate word, and the press treated it like a shibboleth. The one adjective that was supposed to sort the compliant from the heretics.
“Command room: We can now confirm his vaccination status. Still, no word on his wife’s location.”
However, when he tested positive weeks later, and the truth came out, the same outlets that had spent a season obsessing over one man&#8217;s vaccine record just about detonated.
ESPN, CNN, all the big guys, they went on a two-week rampage treating his status like a hull breach. Like the ship had hit the iceberg. Like WWEleven had broken out. Because a healthy, able-bodied adult took ivermectin instead of a vaccine.
And the fallout of the wall-to-wall coverage of the anti-vax villain? A $14,650 personal fine and a $300,000 hit to the Packers, for the crime of not forcing a mask onto their quarterback during press conferences. Prevea Health walked away from a nine-year partnership overnight. State Farm quietly slashed his airtime. He got the full scarlet-letter treatment for refusing to performative compliance for the crusade, right alongside the millions of Americans who said no and paid for it with their jobs.
Now, four years later, training camp is underway, the sun&#8217;s out over Latrobe, the Steelers haven&#8217;t laid a finger on him for saying any of it, and Anthony Fauci&#8217;s little girl diary just got read into the Congressional record. I&#8217;d wager Aaron Rodgers is having a pretty good week.
He told Yinz so.
Turns out Fauci <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rfk-jr-owns-dana-bash-proving-media-fed-covid-hysteria?author=Chloe+Trapanotto&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=RFK+Jr.+Owns+Dana+Bash+Proving+Media+Fed+COVID+Hysteria">understood</a> early that COVID behaved like a bad flu, that the virus likely came from a lab in Wuhan (when are we gonna reprimand China for this?), and that the vaccine was never going to stop transmission the way &#8220;the science&#8221; insisted it would.
The Science God probably would’ve told us the truth, but he was a tad busy posing for magazine covers, having dinner with important people, and directing his employees to enter his name for cash prizes.
And last week, instead of answering for it to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, he pleaded the Fifth 111 times. Coward, indeed.
Fauci can deny it happened all he wants, and so can CNN and ESPN, but Rodgers isn’t going to let them forget that it did, and neither are we.
But for now, in between his rants and record-setting rundowns, he’ll be on the field. Because as he told McAfee, he doesn’t care anymore about anything but playing his best ball.
He&#8217;s going out with a bang; let&#8217;s hope it ends with a ring.

Baltimore Ravens v Pittsburgh Steelers – NFL 2025

For Aaron Rodgers, Vindication Has A Pittsburgh Accent

Aaron Rodgers

Covid vaccine

ESPN

In a stunning revelation, Dana Bash <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/rfk-jr-torches-cnn-anchor-dana-bash-press-malpractice-covid-coverage-explosive-clash">admits</a> that it&#8217;s her job to tell the American people the truth. Where has that attitude been the last five years?
On CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; this weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the network&#8217;s chief fact-checker-in-residence got into it over how America responded to the COVID pandemic, and the two obviously had grievances to get off their chests. The conversation looked less like an interview and more like a holiday dinner after one too many eggnog martinis.
Things got heated when Bash pushed the line she&#8217;s pushed for years: Trump bears the blame, governors closed things because hospitals were overrun, Fauci didn&#8217;t shut down America.
RFK correctly called BS. 
 
Fauci&#8217;s own private diary entries show him actively engineering the closures he later denied under oath. March 9, 2020, Fauci advised New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close schools in Westchester’s Orthodox Jewish communities. Six days later, he &#8220;convinced&#8221; Mayor Bill de Blasio to close New York City&#8217;s schools (de Blasio, per Fauci&#8217;s diary, &#8220;had already decided based on what I was saying on TV&#8221;), then went further, telling the mayor he should close the bars and restaurants too. De Blasio said he&#8217;d base it on Fauci&#8217;s recommendation.
I’m sure the “most famous scientist in the world” was giggling, penning that into the burn book.
Days later, Fauci advised de Blasio to push full shelter-in-place for the entire city over Cuomo&#8217;s objections, promising to lean on the governor himself. He privately celebrated convincing Trump to extend &#8220;15 Days to Slow the Spread&#8221; into a 30-day lockdown, calling it a &#8220;good outcome&#8221; that avoided ending mitigation &#8220;prematurely.&#8221; By October 2020, on CBS, he&#8217;d said the quiet part out loud: he recommended the president shut the country down.
Yet by 2022, once the learning-loss data and the empty ICUs became impossible to ignore, Fauci pivoted: he&#8217;d had nothing to do with school closures; the &#8220;default position&#8221; was always to keep kids in class. Wrong — the diary is the receipt. He was the top-down architect leaning on mayors and governors to do his bidding, while the press treated their compliance as spontaneous local wisdom.
Now Bash is doing damage control for the media’s image, but the damage is already done. Lockdowns shuttered 3.5 million businesses, cratered childhood education, and left the U.S. with some of the worst excess-mortality numbers among developed nations, because one man&#8217;s private certainty got laundered into public consensus, and nobody in the press box asked him to show his work.
Then Bash asked what RFK would do differently when the next pandemic hits (because, according to her experts, it’s going to happen within 10 years).
RFK quickly remarked that he’d protect constitutional rights and end the censorship that silenced dissenting doctors the first time around. Bash tried to pivot. RFK didn’t let her. “That was the job of CNN,&#8221; he told her. &#8220;To put the chyrons up on how many people are dying, to get people to comply.&#8221;
“You were part of the problem. There was absolute press malpractice. Your job is a fierce skepticism towards authority, and you weren’t doing that. You were beating up people who were dissenting.”
Boom.
And he’s absolutely correct. Take the lab-leak theory for example. Fauci privately noted the Wuhan market was an “amplifier,” not the source, and scientists on a February 2020 call he joined raised serious concerns about lab manipulation at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Publicly, the “Proximal Origin” paper (shaped with input from the Fauci circle) declared a lab origin “not plausible.” CNN ran with it. Lab leak was a “conspiracy theory,” “comic book” stuff, “widely debunked,” a “Trump talking point.” Then-CNN president Jeff Zucker reportedly ordered staff not to chase it. When former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said it was most likely a lab origin, CNN framed it as “controversial” and “without evidence.” Only years later, <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/new-york-times-msnbc-cnn-slammed-over-debunked-lab-leak-theory/">once</a> FBI and court documents leaned toward the lab theory, did the network quietly soften the ridicule.
Because ostensibly it’s their job to “tell the truth to the American people,” once the truth becomes convenient.
CNN did the same with the mortality numbers. Fauci&#8217;s own February 2020 diary put the case fatality rate at 0.2%–0.3%, closer to a bad flu once mild and asymptomatic cases were counted. Weeks later, in congressional testimony, he told lawmakers the rate was 2%–3%, settling near 1% — 10 times deadlier than seasonal flu. The scarier number is the one that stuck; CNN ran the catastrophe models and sidelined the seroprevalence data that quickly told a calmer story.
The network also frightened parents silly into vaccinating their healthy kids. Which RFK rightfully pointed out. He charged that CNN’s job was “scaring people.” From late 2021 on, CNN treated pediatric vaccination as an unalloyed moral imperative; “Kids 5 to 11 can now get vaccinated. Here’s why it’s safe.” Segments pushed shots for children under 5 the moment the FDA authorized them. Jill Biden’s CNN op-ed urged parents that the vaccine was “the best way” to protect kids. Anchors and experts framed hesitation as dangerous, citing every hospitalization while downplaying the extremely low risk of severe disease in healthy children and the emerging myocarditis signal in adolescent males.
By 2022, Florida’s health department, citing the data, said healthy five- to 17-year-olds “may not benefit.” Randomized trials showed the shots reduced short-term symptomatic infection but offered negligible absolute risk reduction against severe outcomes for low-risk kids. Transmission benefits evaporated with variants. Yet CNN kept up the pressure, treating parental caution as anti-science. RFK asked Bash to present a single study proving net benefit for children. She pivoted to “data upon data” about adult mortality and “misinformation deaths.”
A master of misdirection.
If the world does see another pandemic, it’s good to know certain scientists won’t have their First Amendment right stripped away for saying an uncomfortable truth. Take Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Sunetra Gupta. In October 2020, the trio authored the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for focused protection of the vulnerable instead of blanket lockdowns. NIH Director Francis Collins wanted a &#8220;quick and devastating&#8221; takedown. Fauci called it &#8220;nonsense and very dangerous.&#8221; On CNN, a former Harvard professor announced that herd immunity was &#8220;another word for mass murder.&#8221; The chorus followed, branding the authors reckless cranks.
Today, Bhattacharya runs the NIH. The &#8220;crazies&#8221; keep getting promoted; the experts who got it catastrophically wrong still want the benefit of the doubt.
Look, reporters get things wrong sometimes; so do experts. But there&#8217;s a difference between an honest miss and five years of &#8220;trust the experts&#8221; deployed as a gag order, while the experts secretly admitted they weren&#8217;t sure.
Fauci privately knew mortality was far lower and later walked back school closures. CNN treated lab leak as taboo and pediatric vaccines as non-negotiable. Dissenters were “beaten up.” And now that the diaries, the excess-death data, the learning-loss studies, and the intelligence assessments are public, the same network hosts are rightfully getting grilled for gaslighting us all for years.
And RFK called them on it live, to a quivering, culpable Bash. The ultimate fact-check. And it felt good to watch.

Microplastics Event at EPA

RFK Jr. Owns Dana Bash Proving Media Fed COVID Hysteria

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid into CNN anchor Dana Bash during a Sunday morning interview, arguing that her network — and media across the board — had been complicit in efforts to silence anyone who raised questions about the COVID-19 pandemic orthodoxy.
Kennedy began by pointing out just how quickly Constitutional rights had been trampled as people who spoke out or refused the COVID-19 vaccines faced cancellation, getting fired from their jobs, or worse — and Bash immediately tried to move the conversation in a different direction.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This was a long-overdue moment on CNN.
RFK Jr. called out the network on air for helping to silence dissent during COVID.
Dana Bash was getting visibly irritated, after she repeatedly tried to move the conversation away from censorship.
Then he aimed his fire at Dana Bash… <a href="https://t.co/yHmIxjgz25">pic.twitter.com/yHmIxjgz25</a>
— Overton (@overton_news) <a href="https://x.com/overton_news/status/2083918836999332300?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We need to protect our constitutional rights. That is the primary obligation in our country,” Kennedy began.
&#8220;What does that mean?&#8221; Bash asked.
&#8220;Well, during COVID, we completely dismantled our constitutional rights. We began censoring people in violation of the First Amendment,&#8221; he explained, but Bash interrupted.
&#8220;You’re saying what not to do, I’m asking what to do,&#8221; she protested.
Kennedy pushed back: &#8220;Well, that’s something to do. That is the number one priority: we protect the Constitution.&#8221;
&#8220;Forgive me, but you’re talking about rights and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis that is coming. But I do want to … let’s …&#8221; Bash tried to redirect him.
&#8220;And one of the mistakes we made last time was suppressing those rights. So people weren’t being heard. Doctors who were saying, ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ were being marginalized and vilified,&#8221; Kennedy made it clear that he was not going to be deterred.
Bash tried once more, saying, &#8220;Again, I really want to move on …”
&#8220;Yeah, of course you want to move on because you were part of the problem!&#8221; Kennedy shot back.
&#8220;No! I wasn’t part of the problem!&#8221; Bash objected.
&#8220;There was absolute press malpractice. Your job is to have a fierce skepticism toward authority, and you weren’t doing that,&#8221; Kennedy continued, arguing that many in media were to blame for doing the same. &#8220;You were beating up on people who were dissenting!&#8221;

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr Testifies At Senate Finance Hearing

RFK Jr. Unloads On CNN Anchor Over COVID: ‘You Were Part Of The Problem!’

RFK Jr. Unloads On CNN Anchor Over COVID: 'You Were Part Of The Problem!'

COVID-19

Pandemic

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A high-society doctor threw his weight behind Dr. Anthony Fauci after a fiery Senate hearing on Wednesday, taking to CNN to shield the polarizing pandemic official while declaring the public shouldn’t even care about how COVID-19 started.
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Appearing on CNN’s &#8220;NewsNight,&#8221; Dr. Scott Ratzan, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health Communication, leapt to the defense of Fauci, slamming congressional probes into Fauci’s pandemic response as a full-blown &#8220;assault on science.&#8221;
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“What&#8217;s happened is this is an assault on science and scientists,” Ratzan proclaimed. “And unfortunately, Dr. Fauci is in that seat, 38 years of service to the country, one of the best known scientists for infectious disease, unfortunately, has taken a lot of heat for probably a lot of, shall we say, issues that were not fully his. &#8230; Today, we certainly didn’t learn anything from the way the hearing was held.”
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When conservative radio host Jason Rantz contended that Fauci actively worked to suppress the idea that COVID escaped from a Wuhan laboratory, Ratzan dodged the origin question entirely.
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Instead of demanding accountability for the deadly bug, the Harvard-educated doc shrugged off the lingering mystery.
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“I think the reality is we shouldn’t be worrying about the lab leak theory today,” Ratzan brazenly claimed, insisting the focus should shift to building a “healthier America” rather than pointing fingers over where the virus came from.
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Rantz immediately fired back: “You’re now saying that we shouldn’t talk about where COVID came from?”
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The fiery segment only grew hotter when CNN host Abby Phillip stepped into the ring to go after Donald Trump, eager to dump the blame for America’s dark pandemic era squarely on the 45th president’s doorstep.
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“I may need to remind some people &#8230; Donald Trump was president and shut the country down,” Phillip snapped, running down a laundry list of lockdown-era grievances. “He was president when the mask mandates went into place, he was president when social distancing went into place, he was president when schools shut down.”
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While conceding Trump deserved &#8220;an enormous amount of credit&#8221; for Operation Warp Speed, Phillip insisted Trump can&#8217;t skate away clean from the era&#8217;s fallout. &#8220;The idea that Trump bears no responsibility if the conclusion is that it all went so wrong, that doesn’t line up with the facts.&#8221;
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US-POLITICS-CONGRESS

Top Doc Defends Fauci, Urges Americans To Forget Lab Leak Theory In Fiery Debate

Abby Phillip

While publicly urging Americans to avoid family gatherings and maintain &#8220;social distance,&#8221; Dr. Anthony Fauci was also busy behind the scenes cultivating a chummy friendship with CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
Fauci&#8217;s meetings and family dinners with the longtime CNN personality were revealed in a series of <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf">diary entries</a> made public on Saturday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who uncovered them during his lengthy and thorough investigation into Fauci and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former White House chief medical adviser thoroughly documented his actions throughout the pandemic — with a heavy focus on his own media appearances and coverage, particularly when it was overly flattering — and referenced an interview with Tapper that took place on April 12, 2020. During that interview, Fauci conceded that Tapper had asked tough — but reasonable — questions, and then had called him directly afterward to make sure that the interview had not caused him &#8220;any problems.&#8221;
&#8220;Potential big problem (we shall see). NY Times reporting on an answer to a question that I gave on CNN yesterday (see above). Jake Tapper asked me if we had closed down earlier, whould (sic) that have saved lives. I said it is complicated; he persisted and I said obviously, if you close earlier there would have been lives saved, but the decision was complicated,&#8221; Fauci wrote. &#8220;I could have answered the question better and with more clarity, but the Times is now saying that I was implying that the POTUS was to blame for additional deaths according to me. The far right is tweeting to fire me. The POTUS even re-tweeted the tweet that said to fire me. We shall see how the day goes &#8230;&#8221;
Fauci said that he later met with President Donald Trump, who said that he did not have an issue and business continued as usual.
Of the press briefing that followed, he said, &#8220;I went out and explained that I was being hoest (sic) in my answer to Jake, but that I was not implying that anyone was responsible for more deaths &#8230; Phone call with Jake Tapper. Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.&#8221;
Later that month, Tapper spoke with Fauci about an interview he&#8217;d done with Coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx. Of that exchange, Fauci wrote, &#8220;I was not on Sunday shows. Deb was on CNN with Jake Tapper and did not answer the question of whether it was a mistake for the POTUS to talk about injecting or swallowing bleach. Jake wrote me a text afterwards and said: “Birx has lost her way I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd.&#8221;
On May 4, 2020, Fauci referenced a CNN interview in which Tapper had been hard on the Trump administration&#8217;s &#8220;inadequate&#8221; response to the pandemic — but had spared him the ire reserved for the president: &#8220;Jake Tapper did a segment last night on the inadequate response of the Trump administration to the pandemic. I came out relatively well.&#8221;
Later that month, when Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, tested positive, and Fauci was directly exposed to SARS-CoV-2, he got a call from Tapper making sure that he was all right.
&#8220;Jake Tapper called me and asked whether I was going inot (sic) quarantine. I explained to Jake that I would do a “modified quarantine” since I was a low risk exposure to Kstie (sic). Thid merans (sic) that I will get tested every day, would wear a mask ontinually (sic), and would spend most of my time either alone in my home office or alone in my NIH office and would go to White House or Congress with precautions of universal mask wearing and phycial (sic) distancing. I tested negative yesterday and will get tested every day for 14 days and then 1 time per week,&#8221; he wrote, adding in a subsequent entry that Marc Short was not taking enough precautions.
&#8220;Marc Short (whom I resally (sic) like) practically sits on Katie’s lap and he is vey (sic) close to the VP. Yet he is not even wearing a mask. He actually should be self-quarantining. He was at a much greater risk than I.&#8221;
On July 1, Fauci mentioned a dinner with Tapper and his wife: &#8220;Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.&#8221;
By late July, Fauci was feeding questions to Tapper ahead of interviews with other officials: &#8220;Brett Giroir on Tapper (State of the Union) talking bullsh*t about testing with Jake pressing him. I gave Jake some questions to ask him.&#8221;
And Tapper was calling Fauci to complain about President Trump: &#8220;Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furius (sic) at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severly (sic) questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all.&#8221;
In later entries — into the fall of 2020, as Americans were preparing to host holiday dinners via Zoom — Fauci mentioned another dinner at the Tapper home: &#8220;Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.&#8221;
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Tapper texts Fauci to attack Laura Ingraham and defend the integrity of Dartmouth <a href="https://t.co/pLW5c1zuja">pic.twitter.com/pLW5c1zuja</a>
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) <a href="https://x.com/emilyjashinsky/status/2081488487337906438?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
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In a later exchange, after Fauci appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham, Tapper texted to mock Ingraham, saying it was a shock that she&#8217;d graduated from Dartmouth.

Inside Fauci’s Behind-The-Scenes Bromance With Jake Tapper

Legacy Media

Mainstream Media

Media Bias

Rand Paul

Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery have agreed to delay closing their proposed $110 billion merger until at least June 2027 as they battle a multistate antitrust lawsuit, extending uncertainty over a deal that could reshape the American media landscape.
The agreement allows both sides to avoid a court fight over a preliminary injunction while the case proceeds toward trial.
A coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, sued to block the transaction. The lawsuit claims the merger would &#8220;extinguish competition&#8221; in the media and entertainment industries.
If approved, the merger would unite major media brands, including Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming platforms, CBS News, and CNN under one corporate umbrella.
Rather than continue fighting emergency motions, the companies agreed not to close the transaction until June 2027 or until the court reaches a final decision.
Bonta celebrated the agreement as a major victory for the states challenging the merger.
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Today’s agreement is great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy.
We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure… <a href="https://t.co/m4LFxiA5tP">pic.twitter.com/m4LFxiA5tP</a>
— Rob Bonta (@AGRobBonta) <a href="https://x.com/AGRobBonta/status/2080754504388259849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Today&#8217;s agreement is great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy,&#8221; Bonta said. &#8220;We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day.&#8221;
New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James also praised the decision, <a href="https://x.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/2080742874610626683">calling</a> it &#8220;a critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industries.&#8221;
Paramount defended the merger and said the delay would allow the company to make its case in court.
&#8220;This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators, a conclusion dozens of competition authorities around the world have already reached,&#8221; a Paramount spokesperson <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/paramount-skydance-agrees-halt-warner-bros-merger-june-2027-rcna589137">told</a> NBC News. &#8220;We look forward to proving our case at trial.&#8221;
The merger has attracted attention beyond Hollywood because Paramount is now controlled by Skydance founder and CEO David Ellison, 43, whose acquisition of Paramount was backed by his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a longtime ally and supporter of President Donald Trump. Since Skydance took control of Paramount earlier this year, Ellison has overseen significant changes at CBS News, including bringing in journalist Bari Weiss to overhaul the network&#8217;s news division.
Ellison has drawn praise from President Trump, who has expressed optimism that new ownership could restore credibility to CBS News after years of criticism from conservatives and Republicans.
If this merger happens, one company will control CBS and CNN under ownership that conservatives believe is moving in a different editorial direction.

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