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“Although it pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.” —Anthony Fauci, non-testifying before Congress, July 29, 2026
It all started so innocently, with the young new director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) denying experimental treatments to the victims of a brand-new infectious disease with a virtually 100% mortality rate. It ended with an aging multimillionaire bureaucrat pleading the Fifth when asked to testify before Congress what day of the week it was.
By now, I hope you've had a chance to read all of PJ Media and Townhall's excellent coverage of Wednesday's hearing. I don't always see eye-to-eye with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), but he did the Lord's work yesterday, doing more than any other single person in or outside the Beltway to shatter the carefully cultivated public image Fauci had enjoyed for years.
Sen. Paul seems to have taken a lesson from the late, great Andrew Breitbart, starting with a slow dribble of image-shattering reveals over the weekend, and culminating with one of the most absurd moments in American political history. And if you know me at all, you know I find almost all of it absurd.
So please, take this moment to luxuriate once more in the finest 35 seconds of entertainment ever provided in Washington. With the possible exception of a Clinton-era joke so dirty-minded that I won't even make it.
Hawley: "What day of the week is it today?"
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 29, 2026
Fauci: "5th amendment"
Hawley: "What color tie are you wearing?"
Fauci: "5th amendment"
Hawley: "What color is the carpet?"
Fauci: "5th amendment." pic.twitter.com/IMhiRuQjfe
I had that clip on Repeat for half of Wednesday, I swear, and it still isn't old.
My question today is how this tiny little man — and I don't mean in stature — came to have such a grip on the American people. And as I begin sorting through it all in this week's Thursday Essay, I'll admit that there might not be a satisfactory answer, or even an answer at all.
But I do think I have a grip on what the Fauci legacy is, and it might not be what you expect.
So let's dig in.
And Another Thing: You might have noticed that I haven't once addressed Fauci as doctor — and I won't. As far as I'm concerned, he threw away the right to that honorific along with his fidelity to the Hippocratic Oath.
AIDS first appeared in 1981, and by 1984 when Fauci was appointed head of NIAID, about 5,600 Americans had died of the disease, and the death toll was still accelerating. While the time between contracting HIV to developing full-blown AIDS (and then eventually dying) varied wildly, there were zero legal treatments and AIDS remained a death sentence.
To his credit, young Anthony Fauci did eventually reverse course on experimental treatments. But the lefties still worshipping at the Altar of St. Anthony (more on that shortly) six years after he lied about so many things — enabling this country's first-ever authoritarian lockdowns — seem to forget that he was the off-screen villain in the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club. That was the 2013 biopic — it's excellent, by the way — starring Matthew McConaughey as hustling AIDS victim Ron Woodroof, who worked outside the federal system Fauci defended to try to provide help and relief to fellow sufferers.
In my mind, it's immaterial that Woodroof's efforts mostly proved ineffective or even wrong-headed. What is material is that he had to turn to crime just to try.
Fauci initially stood by the moribund federal health bureaucracy, but eventually worked with activist like ACT UP to create expanded-access and parallel-track programs that fundamentally changed how experimental therapies are made available during public health emergencies.
Writing those words, I wonder if they unlock the key to everything Fauci later got wrong about COVID — including enabling its creation in a Chinese lab.
And yes, I'm stating that as fact.
This is where I'd originally planned to cover Fauci's career in the 1990s and early 2000s, but in fact, it's the perfect time to skip ahead to what truly mattered: his defiance of President Barack Obama, and embrace of Communist China.
And Another Thing: This is where I might joke about "difference without distinction," but this ONE TIME, I swear, Obama wasn't the bad guy.
Drew Holden this week explained gain-of-function (GOF) research, and Fauci's role in it. GOF includes:
any efforts by scientists to make a virus or other pathogen more deadly or more transmissible, to better understand ways said virus could mutate to become more dangerous. Doing so, proponents say, helps better inform efforts to develop vaccines and other defenses in the future. But even proponents admit that doing so carries with it serious risks. A virus made more dangerous to study it is still a more dangerous virus; its exposure to humans no less a threat because it was turbocharged for “good” reasons; its likelihood of escaping containment not mitigated by “good” intentions.
President Trump ordered a halt to GOF research in 2025, But he wasn't the first president to do so. Obama stopped it in 2014, but Fauci did an end-run around him — straight to China. "Fauci has long been a vocal advocate of gain-of-function research, despite these considerable risks," Holden reminded his readers.
More from Drew:
Given short shrift in the melee around the facts (by the media, to be clear, not by Sen. Paul and his team) is that this alleged funding of virus-enhancing research wasn’t just given to a lab in any nation, but to one run by the Chinese Communist Party, our chief geopolitical nemesis, and by any accounts a malignant communist regime opposed to truth and transparency of any kind. Why would we trust them with anything, none the less to conduct above-board research into a deadly pathogen, particularly when they had displayed a long history of safety lapses?
Because, as always, Fauci knew best. He wanted his GOF research, and if that meant doing it outside U.S. law and inside a leaky Wuhan lab, then so be it.
The virus escaped, and the rest is history — a dark chapter in it, too.
Fauci helped to create the COVID emergency. Then, fully embracing Rahm Emanuel's advice to "never let a crisis go to waste," he cashed in both personally and politically.
I won't recount all of the authoritarian madness we endured from roughly 2020-2022, but do let me say this much.
Old people dying alone in medical isolation? K-12 students — including my sons — having their educations interrupted and permanently delayed? Toddlers denied social fundamental social skills due to masking? The destruction of longstanding election laws?
Fauci enabled all of it, and lied about it, too.
And Another Thing: Sadly, President Donald Trump played a role in this. Even if Trump lacked the political capital to fire Fauci — which I won't even stipulate — he chose to weaponize Fauci by making him the public face of the fight against nothing more than a particularly nasty flu virus with a typical mortality rate. Fauci clearly relished the attention, as revealed this week in his diaries. Trump 47, thankfully, has proven far wiser than Trump 45.
The worst part, as Holden also noted on X, was that "Every time Fauci was caught on COVID’s origins, he ran to his loyal lapdogs in legacy media to defend him." And then the media did just that, pimping for St. Anthony (really, I will come back to that) at every turn.
My old friend and colleague Bill Whittle noted many years ago that the press is supposed to act as the white blood cells in the body politic, attacking the pathogens that might weaken or kill it. The postmodern American media serves as an enabler, instead — Fauci's own gain-of-function accelerant.
Countdown to Jake Tapper writing another book, this time on how he was totally fooled by Fauci.
— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) July 27, 2026
Man, I hate that guy. And don't ask whether it's Fauci or Tapper, because as my wife taught me many years ago, the correct answer to almost any either/or question is "Yes."
That said, I'd rather not read any "blah-blah-blah, nobody is going to jail, everything is pointless, blah-blah-blah" black-pilling commentary today. Presidentish Joe Biden screwed us out of ever getting full justice with those preemptive pardons that he may or may not have been aware of having or not having signed himself. But Fauci is a man of pure Ego, and Sen. Paul & Co. just bruised it like a ballerina taking a hit from a defensive tackle.
So take the win — and who knows, there might be more to come. Sen. Paul hasn't let go, and I trust him on this one.
What next?
In yet another don't-miss X article — seriously, I hate this guy — Cynical Publius called Wednesday's hearings "a sort of tipping point in American history." CP went on to argue that Fauci "has become a LIVING SYMBOL of all that is wrong with the unelected federal bureaucracy and the blind, unquestioning allegiance to faulty 'science' that have plagued our lives these many decades."
"I don’t expect to see the Left and the media say 'We were wrong," he continued, adding that "I do expect them to stop defending Fauci. I do expect them to stand aside and let the public anger consume him. Why Because like Ceaușescu’s guards stepping away at the last minute, they do not want to share in his fate."
I hope Publius is right, and he usually is. It's just difficult to see people stepping back en masse from the mass delusions that led to this kind of fanatic devotion:
Humbled and honored to announce the arrival of my Tony Fauci prayer candle. pic.twitter.com/Dvv6k8LNOt
— Julie Pfeiffer (@jkpfeiff) April 20, 2020
While Publius wrote that "the people I know who hate Fauci the MOST are medical professionals—people whose professional reputations were tarnished by proxy through Fauci’s lies and manipulation," the woman "humbled and honored to announce the arrival" of her Fauci prayer candle studies viral pathogenesis at U.T. Southwestern.
Then there are "men" like these, the over-spoiled hipsters with zero understanding of American institutions, or the loving maintenance they constantly require. All they seemed to care about was the warmth of Fauci's radiating self-importance.
These are the guys I was just talking about on @infowars with @rexjonesnewz. Fauci isn't going to jail. We can, however, ridicule his cult into oblivion. https://t.co/Ngcm6QiRjY
— Gavin McInnes (@Gavin_McInnes) July 29, 2026
So, yeah... it's complicated.
But, hey — the Fauci Legacy isn't all doom and gloom because we'll always have the memes. Here's where we invoke Saul Alinsky's Rule Five: "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon."
"It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."
For example, we could rehash the news from earlier this week about Fauci's diaries. Or, I could just turn the stage over to Mary Katharine Ham for a moment.
Dear Diary,
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 27, 2026
Today, they gave Heather the lead in the school play. I do not know who in the senior class did this. It could be anyone from Ashlee (I doubt this) to Kelli (still mad I dated Mark). This has nothing to do with me throwing up on stage in audition and everything to… https://t.co/5u7fqXSkYB
More? I need more, too.
Find a person who loves you as much as Dr. Fauci loves himself. pic.twitter.com/jVU3aOWMrk
— Planet Of Memes (@PlanetOfMemes) July 29, 2026
And here's none other than Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a former Democrat yet also a longtime critic — having way too much fun at Fauci's expense.
Dear Diary... If I plead the Fifth, will I still be famous? pic.twitter.com/f0OwHbTOMO
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) July 29, 2026
This is how it should be.
Non-Doctor Anthony Fauci is one of the most mockable personalities in American history. If Tom Wolfe had created Fauci as the protagonist in An Even Bigger Bonfire of the Vanities, critics and audiences alike would have agreed that he'd lost his touch. Fauci's complete amorality, baseless preening, and endless scheming make him too cartoonish even to serve as an Ayn Rand villain.
You can't make this guy up. Only an Anthony Fauci could create an Anthony Fauci, and the ridiculousness of that as a premise and in execution is almost beyond parody.
Thanks again to the Biden Cabal, Fauci will likely keep his liberty and his riches. But the thing that mattered most to a man like that —t he admiration, fear, and moral authority he craved beyond science or reason — vanished this week in an endless procession of “On advice of counsel…” Fifth Amendment pleas and a flood of “Dear Diary…” jokes. The statue of Fauci carved in his own mind is toppled.
That's the Fauci legacy.
Last Thursday: We Need to Talk About 'The Odyssey'
