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RANDY FINE BEEF

Joseph McBride, an incendiary attorney who represents several Jan. 6 riot defendants, appeared on behalf of committee witnesses Alexander Bruesewitz and Ali Alexander.

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an 8 26

Foreign countries are paying online influencers in the MAGA world, but new reporting revealed it's no longer only about elections.

Politico Playbook reported Monday that the influencer campaign has now taken a turn where foreign money is flowing into MAGA influencers who, in turn, have their own online lobbying campaign targeting Cabinet officials.

After previously caring little, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl.) wants to do something about it and Democrats are eagerly joining her effort.

“Being an influencer right now is kind of like the Wild West,” Luna said, speaking to Politico Playbook. “There’s a lot of things laws haven’t caught up to.”

The report cited bipartisan support from Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) and Vicente Gonzalez (Texas) and Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden (Wis.).

Luna said that the Foreign Propaganda Registration Act would be an amendment to the Foreign Agents Registration Act that would mandate influencers disclose when they're being paid by a foreign government to promote political commentary to their followers.

Luna had a briefing that cited foreign influence efforts and she spoke with government agencies that heard about payments coming "on the back end" of the influencer world.

“I have a number of those people,” Luna said when asked whether she knew there were specific influencers scoring foreign cash. “I’m not going to put anyone on blast. That’s not my job.”

“Some of your biggest profile names ... a large portion of them, in some way, shape or form, have been approached at one point to push a certain position that’s probably tied to a foreign country,” Luna added.

She said she's seen contracts that go into the millions of dollars.

Luna also said that she thinks Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be open to the idea, but if he isn't, she said she'd simply do a "discharge petition" and move it forward anyway. In the past several months, Republicans have sidestepped the leadership on bipartisan legislation that Johnson refused to push by using a discharge petition. It requires that 218 lawmakers sign on to support a bill or resolution to be pushed out of committee and voted on by the full House.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to use because members’ signatures are public and can carry political consequences. Though in the last two years, all of the discharge petitions have been in part due to public pressure.

"The fight ballooned in recent months inside MAGA, where the sprawling influencer ecosystem that fueled Trump’s political rise faces growing accusations within its own ranks that foreign governments and other well-funded interests are trying to manipulate it," said Playbook. "Allegations have been leveled against influencers targeting JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and recently that Laura Loomer’s trip to Ukraine was funded by the country — which she vehemently denied."

In April, Alex Bruesewitz, who is in Trump’s inner circle and is also closest to the MAGA influencer world, has been advocating that influencers stamp out such foreign campaigns.

"Bruesewitz has begun flagging suspected paid pressure campaigns as high up as Cabinet officials, warning them who may be behind efforts to influence their agencies," Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the effort.

“If you get paid to promote a swimsuit, you have to say ‘paid partnership.’ If you get paid to tell the president to pull tariffs off of India, you don’t have to disclose,” Bruesewitz told Playbook. “The American public deserves to know what content that is going out on the accounts of their favorite social media personalities is bought and paid for by foreign interests.”

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07/20/2026

Joel Zapata @ Texas Observer: The Real Lesson Behind Texas’ New Bible Curriculum Requirements

Going forward, students will learn that life circumstances are beyond their power to change. They will learn that their place and the place of others in the economy and larger society should not be questioned.

Sophia Tesfaye @ Salon: MAGA’s influencer class is breaking Trump’s White House

As the failure of Trump’s domestic agenda demoralizes his base, the defining currency of MAGA has shifted from ideology to access.

FOr years, Donald Trump benefited from an informal court of influencers, podcasters and self-appointed power brokers who claimed unusual access to the former reality TV star. During his presidential campaigns and midterm election cycles, that ecosystem amplified Trump’s message and bypassed traditional Republican institutions. Now it’s colliding with the basic mechanics of governing and embarrassing the administration by creating a parallel power structure of clout chasers around the presidency.

This week alone offered multiple remarkably different examples of the same phenomenon. In one, alleged pardon brokers sold access to Trump’s orbit as a luxury service. In another, one of Trump’s most influential MAGA personalities allegedly converted that proximity into a payday on the prediction markets. And in another example, a freshman Republican congressman threatened to derail House business over a feud with one of Trump’s favorite influencers.

It’s not just that MAGA has grifters. It is that the grifters now help define the terms of power.

Each of these scandals is about a White House surrounded by people who have figured out that proximity to power is the only product worth selling, and who are now cashing in on it badly enough to blow up their own party’s agenda. It’s not just that MAGA has grifters. It is that the grifters now help define the terms of power.

The clearest way to see the problem is the way Trump World now treats information. In MAGAland, insider information is something to be teased, reposted and traded on. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that over lunch at a members-only social club in Tampa, Florida, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna confided in associates that she already knew Trump would pick JD Vance as his running mate in 2024. According to a person familiar with the conversation, she revealed she had passed the tip on to Rogan O’Handley, the MAGA influencer known to millions of followers as “DC Draino,” so he could place a winning bet on Polymarket, and she later teased him for not placing a bigger wager.

O’Handley had reportedly been quietly campaigning on social media to get Trump to consider Luna herself for the ticket, and when she told him Vance had gotten the nod instead, he cashed in on the correct pick anyway. Another account described a former investment banker saying he received the same kind of early tip through a conservative Heritage Foundation associate and used it to profit as well. Both Luna and O’Handley deny any wrongdoing, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is reportedly examining the allegations.

As the failure of Trump’s domestic agenda demoralizes his base, the defining currency of MAGA has shifted from ideology to access. So now the administration is completely besieged by unelected influencers who treat proximity to the Oval Office as a monetization strategy.

To understand how deep the transactional rot at the heart of modern conservatism goes, look no further than the spectacular saga of Torrence Hatch, rapper Boosie Badazz’ legal name. Facing a federal sentencing hearing for possessing a firearm as a felon, Hatch did what many desperate people do in the orbit of the current administration: He looked for a monetary shortcut. For the cool sum of $600,000, Hatch hired JM Burkman & Associates — a firm run by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, a pair of notorious right-wing grifters. The deal was supposed to help him secure a Trump pardon after a federal gun case, but the pardon never materialized, and Boosie is now trying to recover part of the money through arbitration.

Related

MAGA wants to launder political donations — through God

The Trump administration’s second-term clemency process has become so informal that a handful of White House aides and outside allies can shape who gets attention, while people outside the administration sell themselves as if they can guarantee access.

Boosie’s case reads like a perfect MAGA parable because Wohl and Burkman allegedly pitched him with the confidence of people who knew how to sound close to the center. These are the same convicted felons who pleaded guilty over an illegal robocall campaign targeting Black voters during the 2020 election and later faced millions in civil penalties. Yet in the MAGA economy, past disgrace is a premium credential. The two reportedly invoked a network of conservative influencers and Republican officials — including influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, far-right media personalities Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, MAGA activist Erika Kirk, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Andy Biggs of Arizona — as if name-dropping alone could grease the machinery of the presidency. Several of those figures denied involvement once the story went public, which only sharpened the point: the MAGA ecosystem is so saturated with pseudo-access that it is hard to tell where the con ends and the governing begins.

If the Boosie affair illustrates how MAGA influencers are monetizing the White House from the outside, a crisis that emerged this week on the House floor shows how they are breaking the government from within as that same competition for influence is now spilling directly into the legislative process.

Alex Bruesewitz is not a Cabinet official and holds no Senate-confirmed position. He serves as an outside political adviser to Trump. Yet a sitting Republican congressman spent this week threatening to gum up the GOP’s agenda in the House until Bruesewitz is removed from the president’s orbit.

Florida Rep. Randy Fine’s break with his party over a routine procedural rule might look minor in isolation, but in a chamber of Congress Republicans control by a bare 218 to 212 margin, even one defection changes the math. On July 14, Fine did something almost unheard of for a modern Republican and voted no, the only member of his party to do so, on a 215-211 procedural rule tying the long-stalled Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act to a State Department funding bill.

The strange part is that Fine had spent months publicly begging Senate Republicans to attach the SAVE America Act to exactly this kind of must-pass legislation. He’d even co-signed a letter in March alongside Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, Chip Roy of Texas, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and others, pledging to vote no on any Senate bill until it moved. So when House leadership finally gave him what he’d demanded, he voted no anyway, telling reporters only that he was working out “disputes inside the family,” a line he delivered, word for word, to both the Daily Caller and TMZ, which tells you it was a rehearsed answer.

The real family dispute has nothing to do with voter identification. Fine has reportedly told White House officials he intends to vote against every rule that reaches the House floor until Trump fires Bruesewitz. The feud apparently traces back to Bruesewitz’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, where Carlson, discussing Trump’s own endorsement of Fine, described the congressman on air as “that creepy fat guy from Florida who endorsed genocide.” Bruesewitz piled on, telling Carlson that Fine “has tweeted some ugly things, really ugly things,” and he promoted Fine’s primary challenger, celebrity gambler Dan Bilzerian.

Fine, who is Jewish, has built much of his political identity around confronting antisemitism on the right, once calling Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America” for platforming white nationalist Nick Fuentes. The Florida congressman retaliated on X, accusing Bruesewitz, Carlson and Candace Owens of spreading a “mind virus” that seeks to “pit Jews and Christians against each other.” He has since taken the fight off social media and turned his own vote into a weapon, threatening to freeze the House floor until Trump and Bruesewitz waved the white flag.

That a sitting member of Congress was willing to shut down his own party’s legislative business over a personal and ideological vendetta involving a Fox News alumnus and an outside political adviser is landing at the worst possible moment for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who needs something close to unanimity just to function. He’s already seen what a handful of defections can do: Weeks earlier, a separate bloc of conservative holdouts, several of whom had signed Fine’s own SAVE America letter, tanked a defense authorization rule. Suddenly Johnson was faced with a member willing to burn down the floor schedule indefinitely because the party’s most influential unofficial adviser called him fat on a podcast.

When clout brokers can provoke lawmakers into obstructing their own party’s agenda, the White House is no longer directing the coalition — it is being dragged around by it. It’s clear that Donald Trump’s unofficial MAGA court is becoming a liability.

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04/03/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Get to know the under-the-radar leaders of a movement that helped organize January 6 and continues to pose a threat to American democracy.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) fired off an angry letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday, slamming the department's move to restore certain health grants to Planned Parenthood.

The defense secretary’s efforts to block or delay promotions to general or admiral for some officers has raised concerns that he may be targeting them because of race, gender or affiliation with the Biden administration, sources say.

President Donald Trump’s stunning rant about cutting or eliminating massively popular programs (from a now-deleted White House event) went viral — and all the “context” in the world doesn’t make it any better.

Many in Trumpworld are circling the newly open job of attorney general. Jeanine Pirro may be the most recklessly loyal.

Alex Bruesewitz went from volunteer online hatchet man for Donald Trump to his lead impresario. What will he do if pop culture decides MAGA is no longer cool?

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Stop the Steal organizer and MAGA political consultant Alex Bruesewitz is joining the floundering Trump campaign. Bruesewitz is among several new hires, including Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Bruesewitz has been a “top official” at a pro-Trump super PAC and a participant in the online pro-Trump “troll army.”

Bruesewitz is one of the right-wing activists mobilized by Roger Stone ally Ali Alexander to mobilize support for Trump’s efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election. Bruesewitz went to Wisconsin, where he organized a rally and called for a revote.

In December 2020, after the states cast their Electoral College votes, Bruesewitz called it a “disgrace” that then-Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had reportedly urged Republican senators not to support efforts to challenge the outcome, and said he had spoken with “many billionaires” willing to fund primary challenges to Republican incumbents who didn’t back Trump. Bruesewitz was among the MAGA loyalists who vowed to take revenge on Trump’s enemies by funding primary challenges to congressional Republicans who didn’t go along with efforts to block certification of Trump’s victory.

Bruesewitz spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the insurrection, where speakers mingled conspiracy theories, Christian nationalism, and threats of violence. “What’s going to start a civil war is if we legitimize a rigged and stolen election,” Bruesewitz said. “We will never acknowledge Joe Biden as the president of the United States.”

Since the Jan. 6 insurrection, Bruesewitz continued to claim—against all evidence to the contrary—that “The January 6th ‘riot’ wasn’t conducted by Trump supporters to stop the certification of the election.” He claimed that the violence was carried out by “federal informants to stop the debate of the election so the American people couldn’t get the transparency they deserved.”

In 2022, Bruesewitz said the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 resolution could “go to hell” and said, “I will never apologize for exercising my constitutional rights after the 2020 ‘election,’” which he had called “the greatest scam in the history of our nation.” He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer investigators’ questions.

In August 2022, when an FBI office in Ohio was attacked after the FBI carried out a search at Mar-a-Lago, Bruesewitz claimed that the attack was a “hoax” by “Biden’s Gestapo.”

Last year, he was reportedly considering a move to his home state of Wisconsin to mount a run for Congress. Earlier this year, Bruesewitz joined Donald Trump, Jr. on the campaign trail for Rep. Lauren Boebert.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-right-turned-dr-fauci

matt g

no lnx many vid]

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official and a public health adviser to seven presidents, announced on Monday that he plans to retire in December after more than 50 years of public service. President Joe Biden toasted Fauci as “a steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades” and praised his “unparalleled spirit, energy, and scientific integrity,” while top scientists touted his record of “sav[ing] countless lives.”

While Fauci once earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President George W. Bush, his impending retirement was not greeted with plaudits from the right. On Fox News that night, Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue described him as “a dangerous fraud, a man who has done things that in most countries, at most times in history, would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” The New York Post headlined its editorial the next day “Good riddance to dangerous Dr. Fauci,” while The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board concluded that “his legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust government health experts in the same way again.”

Fauci, like everyone else involved in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans, does not have a perfect record. But he spent his career trying to remain impartial, avoid partisanship, and offer the best advice he could, and for decades, he was respected on both sides of the political aisle. That reputation ultimately could not survive the relentless propaganda of the right-wing press, which needed a coronavirus scapegoat and found one in the octogenarian scientist.

Right-wing propagandists began turning Fauci into their latest hate object in March 2020. At the time, states had imposed stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures that were recommended by the Trump administration to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Fox and other pro-Trump outlets consistently downplayed the threat posed by the virus and promoted a minimalistic response that dismissed such efforts in favor of snake oil miracle cures.

Trump’s media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president, and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response. He initially drew their ire as a critic of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, the malaria drugs that Fox hosts and then the president had recommended as a coronavirus treatment (numerous studies have found the drugs ineffective) and as part of the supposed “ruling class” that could weather a long-term economic shutdown. 

At the time, even right-wing pugilists like Fox’s Tucker Carlson were still pulling their punches. “Imagine another year of this,” he said on his April 3, 2020, show. “That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least.” But Carlson went on to acknowledge that Fauci wasn’t trying to “hurt America,” saying that he “seems like a very decent man” who was simply misguided. 

That gentility would not last. The pro-Trump media — and Carlson in particular — became increasingly unhinged and vituperative toward Fauci as the pandemic wore on. Ultimately, the right-wing attacks on Fauci had dramatic impacts for the country.

By mid-May of 2020, Fox’s prime-time stars had decided that the crisis was over. When Fauci said in congressional testimony that it was not, and that the virus was likely to recur in the fall and winter, they began pushing for Trump to fire him. On programs that the Fox-obsessed president watched religiously, they portrayed Fauci as power-mad and using his influence to “favor what the Democrats want.” Those attacks continued over the following weeks and months. 

In July, Trump began publicly echoing the right-wing media’s concerns about Fauci. The following month, the president appointed Scott Atlas, a radiologist and right-wing think tanker who caught his attention through frequent Fox appearances, to the White House coronavirus task force.

Atlas effectively displaced Fauci as Trump’s top coronavirus adviser, and used that position to promote a “herd immunity” strategy for coping with the virus. His actions ultimately helped bring about the very wave of hospitalizations and deaths Fauci had earned the opprobrium of the right for warning about months earlier.

But the right’s attacks on Fauci continued over the months and years to come.

Carlson was the scientist’s most implacable media foe. He described Fauci as an “elderly power-drunk epidemiologist”; “capricious and transparently political”; a “hypocritical buffoon”; an “oily politician on an ego trip”; and an “even shorter version of Benito Mussolini.” He denounced the scientist’s recommendations as “authoritarian,” falsely claimed that Fauci “helped to create” the coronavirus, and called for him to “never work in public policy again.”

Other right-wing pundits demonized Fauci as “one of the great criminals of our civilization” and a member of the “medical deep state” who was “on a jihad” against Trump and behaves “more like a monarch.” They called for an investigation into his purported crimes and fantasized about him being put in “leg irons” or even beheaded. They even accused him — falsely — of killing puppies, with one describing him as “the dog-murdering and orphan-killing doctor, Anthony Benito Fauci.”

Fox’s attacks on Fauci have become so habitual that they often seemed to serve as background noise on the right-wing channel. But at times, the network’s talking heads have issued comments so abhorrent that they trigger widespread public outrage and even a response from the network brass. Fox sidelined Lara Logan, a host on the network’s streaming service, after she compared Fauci to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele during a November 2021 appearance. The following month, the network publicly defended host Jesse Watters after he drew controversy for exhorting an audience of young right-wing activists to “ambush” Fauci with a rhetorical “deadly” “kill shot.” 

Amid the flurry of often violent public criticism, Fauci divulged that he regularly received threats. Earlier this month, a man was sentenced to more than three years in prison for sending Fauci emails with comments like “You and your entire family will be dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.”

Fauci’s retirement announcement has opened a debate about who might succeed him. But senior members of the U.S. medical establishment are warning that the right’s attacks on Fauci may limit the pool of applicants willing to try to fill his shoes.

“What keeps the former surgeon general [Jerome Adams] up at night is his fear that talented candidates won’t want these jobs after what Fauci and other public health officials have faced over the last few years,” Politico reported on Monday. “Fauci has received death threats, and his daughters have been harassed — and Adams worries that this vitriol is a big part of why Fauci is stepping down.”

When the next pandemic hits, the U.S. response might thus be hobbled, thanks to the right-wing media’s impulse to destroy a vital public servant for political gain.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-promise-harass-anthony-fauci-retirement-if-republicans-win-back-control

no lnx vid

Right-wing media promise to harass Anthony Fauci in retirement if Republicans win back control of Congress

Fauci’s retirement announcement was met with a new flurry of vitriol from right-wing media

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD, BUSHRA SULTANA & SHELBY JAMERSON

PUBLISHED 08/24/22

When presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci announced his plans to retire in December after five decades of public service, right-wing media personalities predictably attacked him, calling him a “sociopathic liar and political hack” who “needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.”

On Monday, Fauci announced he intends to step down as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In response, right-wing media mounted a public onslaught, claiming that Fauci is stepping down to avoid investigations if Republicans take control of Congress in November, directing the GOP to investigate Fauci if the party should take control, proclaiming Fauci should face criminal charges and be sent to prison, and generally attacking his character.

Even Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, who had previously served as a seeming voice of reason and who has previously interviewed Fauci at the network, pressed the retiring public servant about whether his retirement was really just “a way to avoid Republican investigators.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto

Right-wing media, especially Fox News, have been maligning Fauci since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted, then-President Donald Trump’s “media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president,” whose administration’s response included recommendations of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures, “and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response.” The smear campaign against Fauci didn’t stop; over a roughly 10-month period in 2021, Fox News personalities attacked him over 400 times.

Fauci may plan to retire at the end of the year, but the right-wing echo chamber is prepared to hound him for years to come if given the opportunity.

Claims that Fauci is stepping down to avoid oversight

Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson speculated that Fauci may have resigned because he thinks the Republicans are going to take over Congress in the midterm elections and does not want to be investigated by them. “So it's possible that Tony Fauci might want to resign before he has to explain all of that to a new Congress,” Carlson said. “He might want to get out of town now and move to, say, Cambridge, find a safe place to hide before the reckoning. Just a thought. Because honestly, there's a lot to answer for.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]

Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham speculated that “Fauci thinks this retirement would save him from a congressional investigation or a subpoena.” She then interviewed Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said congressional Republicans would want to investigate Fauci based on the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was human-made. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton claimed, “Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Dana Loesch claimed Fauci “doesn't want that GOP-controlled House oversight.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Fox prime-time host Jesse Wattersclaimed that Fauci “seems to think stepping down before Republicans take the House will get him off scot-free.” Watters made this pronouncement just hours after Fauci appeared on Fox and told Neil Cavuto that he would not avoid appearing before Congress. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]

The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam: “BREAKING: Fauci to step down right before Republicans are expected to take control of Congress and commence investigations into his funding of the Wuhan Lab and pandemic response.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp claimed “it's no coincidence” that Fauci announced he will step down in December, noting that it “is right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Calls for congressional Republicans to investigate Fauci

Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity declared that “Fauci still needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” He then interviewed Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who predicted that if there is a Republican-controlled Congress, it would subpoena Fauci to testify next year. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/22/22]

Fox’s “news side” presented a more respectable face for the right’s determination to investigate Fauci. Fox contributor Marc Thiessen discussed the need for an “after-action study” of the nation’s COVID-19 response, while blaming Fauci for various aspects of both the pandemic response and its economic consequences. Concluding the segment, co-anchor Bill Hemmer said that in “2023, I think we’ll see him again.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]

Fox anchor Sandra Smith asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “What do you want to see happen as far as holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his actions during this pandemic?” Marshall then repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of covering up the supposed creation of COVID-19 in a lab, statements which Smith did not challenge. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/23/22; FactCheck.org, 5/19/22]

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro said on Newsmax that the government should to “take that SOB’s passport” so Fauci cannot flee a Republican-led congressional investigation.Navarro himself was recently indicted for a charge of contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 8/22/22; NPR, 6/4/22]

Calls for Fauci’s to face criminal charges and/or prison

“Stop the Steal” organizer Alex Bruesewitz wrote that Fauci “should be investigated, and quite frankly arrested, for what he put our country through.” [Twitter, 8/22/22; Media Matters, 7/27/22]

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Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk declared that Fauci “belongs in prison.” He continued, “Seize the passports. Freeze his pension, distribute it to his victims. Lawyer up. Time to hold him accountable for the last 3 years.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Clay Travis wrote that Fauci “belongs in prison,” claiming he is the “most destructive bureaucrat in United States history.” Travis also said Fauci’s “‘leadership’ on covid will — in the decades ahead — come to be seen as one of the greatest and most destructive failures in our nation’s history.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing podcasters Diamond & Silk: “Fauci doesn't need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Attacks on Fauci’s character

In his opening monologue, Fox's Carlson said, “On some level, even Tony Fauci knows that Tony Fauci is in fact a dangerous fraud.” Carlson further elaborated that Fauci “has done things that in most countries at most times in history would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]

Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Fauci an “authoritarian monster.” She claimed Fauci “led our country on a Chinese-style approach instead of an American-style where we look at science.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/23/22]

Washington Examiner’s Haisten Willis described Fauci as someone some people “feel is … self-promoting, unaccountable, and even liable for helping start the pandemic.” [Washington Examiner, 8/22/22]

Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen: “Never has anybody been so wrong about so much for so long and been so lionized as Anthony Fauci.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]

Sean Duffy, Fox News contributor and former member of Congress, repeatedly accused Fauci of having “Chinese” principles instead of American ones in his supposed use of the power of government. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/23/22]

Fox News’ Katie Pavlich said it is “sickening” the way Fauci supposedly let “power and fame” go to his head.Pavlich tweeted, “In March 2020 Fauci actually told the truth about who Wuhan coronavirus was deadly for, the elderly and those with comorbidities. He said it was ‘very clear.’ He also said drug store masks don’t work. Then, he got a taste of power and fame he just couldn’t let go. Sickening.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

New York Post columnist Karol Markowiczon Fauci: “His half-century of ‘public service’ was a disaster for us. His handling of covid should be studied in the future as a blueprint of what not to do.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro called Fauci “a true douchebag.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 08/23/22]

Right-wing media gadflyBenny Johnson called Fauci “the most evil and malevolent character in my lifetime.” [The Benny Show, via YouTube, 8/23/22]