Fauci: ‘Normalization of Untruths...Is the Beginning of the Destruction of Democracy’

WAGNER: “Do you worry, though — I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but it seems like these sort of dark forces of racism
And anti-Semitism and anti-vax and arch-conservative ideology are folding onto themselves around this Covid issue. I think this past weekend, Beverly Hills police in California had to look into anti-Semitic flyers that were distributed around Beverly Hills, listing CDC officials who have Jewish last names saying, ‘Every single aspect of the Covid agenda is Jewish.’ That worries me as an American citizen. That worries me as someone who believes in the work you have been doing and sees it as essential to public health. Does it worry you? And does it concern you that this vitriol has grown and has reached tentacles into other sort of poisonous areas of American politics?”
Fauci: “I think you have a very important point there, Alex. That has worried me much, much more so than personal attacks on me. It’s the things you brought out there, the complete denial of reality, the normalization of untruths, where there is so much lying going on over there that people accept it as being part of the norm. And I think, if anybody looks at history and finds out and examines when you distort reality and keep lying over and over again, after a while you get a lot of people believing it and that is the beginning, I believe, of the destruction of our democracy. So, it’s less an attack on me or my Jewish colleagues at the CDC that they are attacking. It is really, in my mind, an affront on our democracy. It’s the same mindset that says the President didn’t win the election, even though every single examination proved that he did. When they say that January 6th did not exist and was a friendly visit to the gift shop at the Capitol, I mean, that kind of mentality to me is a danger to democracy.”