Will Catches Fox Lying About Fauci—Again

Summary

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Bulwark Takes — "Will Catches Fox Lying About Fauci—Again"

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Host: The Bulwark (Will Saletan)
Date: August 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Will Saletan dives into a recent wave of attacks against Dr. Anthony Fauci, focusing on the misuse and misrepresentation of Fauci's personal diary by Fox News and top Republican figures. Saletan meticulously debunks specific falsehoods, illustrating how outlets and politicians twist facts to perpetuate conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine safety, and public health measures. The episode poses a strong defense of science and fact-based public health guidance, warning about the real-world consequences of misinformation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Fauci Diary: Fox and GOP Weaponize Personal Notes

• Will Saletan sets the stage by describing how Republicans, including RFK Jr., Laura Ingraham, Jesse Waters, and Senator Ron Johnson, are leveraging Fauci’s diary to accuse him of a wide array of failings and conspiracies.
• Quote (00:30):
  "They said he got everything wrong in Covid and he ruined everyone's life. And he was a terrible person. So what I'm going to do is set the record straight." — Will Saletan

2. RFK Jr. and False Medical Claims

• RFK Jr. (now Secretary of Health in the Bulwark's scenario) falsely claimed on Fox that Fauci’s diary showed he had a pulmonary infarction (blood clot in his lung) five months after receiving a Moderna vaccine, and that this was an "expected" side effect.
• Debunked: Saletan notes that pulmonary infarction is not on the CDC's list of adverse vaccine events; vaccine side effects occur within days or weeks, not months.
• Quote (01:43):
  "There's nothing about pulmonary infarction on this list. Kennedy told you there was, but there isn't." — Will Saletan
• Noteworthy Gaffe: RFK Jr. confuses "mitochondrial infarction" with "myocardial infarction" (heart attack).
• Quote (04:12):
  "There's no such thing as a mitochondrial infarction... Why did Kennedy get it mixed up? Because he's a complete ignoramus." — Will Saletan

3. Fox News Hosts Repeat and Amplify the Falsehoods

• Jesse Waters and others insist Fauci’s health episode was a direct result of "vaccine injury" and accuse Fauci of hiding the risks.
• Quote (05:09):
  "He actually had a vaccine injury at one point and then he lied and said the vaccine's fine." — Jesse Waters

4. The “N95” and Mask Misinformation

• Waters falsely claims Fauci ignored N95 masks.
• Saletan counters with audio proof of Fauci repeatedly advocating for N95 masks.
  • Quote (05:51):
    "The best mask you can get and the order of gradation is N95, clearly the best... Well, if you can tolerate an N95, do it." — Anthony Fauci
• Saletan ridicules Fox’s focus on diary excerpts, overlooking reams of Fauci’s public statements on masks.

5. Cherry-Picking Fauci’s Statements on COVID Lethality

• Laura Ingraham selectively quotes Fauci on the 3% mortality rate, omitting that he immediately argued it was likely closer to 1% after accounting for undiagnosed cases.
• Quote (08:04):
  "It first started off as 2 and now 3. I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around 1%." — Anthony Fauci

6. School Closures: Context and Deception

• Fox pundits accuse Fauci of orchestrating prolonged school closures, using diary entries from March 2020 as proof.
• Saletan explains that Fauci quickly pivoted within months, urging schools to reopen and warning about the harms of closures.
• Quote (09:29):
  "It is very important to get the children back to school for the unintended negative consequences that occur when we keep them out of school." — Anthony Fauci
• Pundits avoid mentioning the timing of diary entries (March 2020) to imply long-term advocacy for closures.

7. Exaggeration and Fabrication by GOP Figures

• Ron DeSantis claims Fauci traveled to Florida to oppose him. Saletan clarifies Fauci didn't visit Florida till a year after DeSantis reopened schools (12:24).
• Ron Johnson and Roger Marshall parrot conspiracy theories:
  • Fauci "sabotaged" early treatments to get vaccine approval (15:02)
  • Fauci “created” the pandemic via research funding, a claim thoroughly debunked by genetic facts (16:41).

8. The Lab Leak and Fauci “Coverup”

• Pundits imply Fauci’s diary admits lab-origin of COVID, contradicting his public statements.
• Saletan: “Nowhere in his diary did Fauci say that the virus was more than likely made in a lab. That is just another lie.” (17:54)

9. Alternative Solutions: “Natural Immunity” Death Toll Math

• Laura Ingraham again touts "natural immunity via infection" as the solution.
• Saletan runs the numbers:
  • Letting 330 million Americans get infected (even at a 0.5% death rate) would’ve caused 1.6 million deaths, nearly double the actual toll.
  • Quote (19:06):
    "If we had listened to these geniuses at FOX... half a million more Americans would have died." — Will Saletan

10. Anti-Science Rhetoric’s Real Threat

• Ron Johnson warns public health will “do it again” with future outbreaks—urges listeners to ignore expert guidance.

• Quote (20:25):
  "They create fear so that they can force these countermeasures on us... it's a smoke stream to do bioweapon research itself." — Ron Johnson

• Saletan warns of the mortal risk of believing such lies:

  Quote (20:53): "If everyone had listened to them instead of listening to Fauci, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are alive today would be dead. And if we listen to them next time, God knows how many more will die." — Will Saletan

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Will Saletan (04:12):
  "There's no such thing as a mitochondrial infarction... Why did Kennedy get it mixed up? Because he's a complete ignoramus."
• Anthony Fauci (05:51):
  "If you can tolerate an N95, do it."
• Will Saletan (08:26):
  "But Ingraham wanted to pretend that Fauci exaggerated the mortality rate, so she clipped out just the part she wanted."
• Anthony Fauci (09:29):
  "It is very important to get the children back to school for the unintended negative consequences that occur when we keep them out of school."
• Will Saletan (20:53):
  "If everyone had listened to them instead of listening to Fauci, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are alive today would be dead."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:30: Setting the stage — Fox and GOP go after Fauci’s diary
• 01:17-04:12: Dissecting RFK Jr.’s vaccine and science errors
• 05:09: Jesse Waters and vaccine "injury" claims
• 05:51: Fauci on N95 masks (audio proof)
• 07:39-08:26: Misleading edits on COVID lethality
• 09:29: Fauci advocates for school reopening (June 2020)
• 10:00-12:04: Fox distorts diary context about school closures
• 12:15: The DeSantis "Fauci Florida" myth
• 13:35-16:41: Vaccine, lab leak, and conspiracy theories from Waters, Johnson, Marshall
• 18:45-19:06: Ingraham’s “natural immunity”—Saletan’s death toll math
• 20:25-20:53: Johnson’s anti-public health stance; Saletan’s closing warning

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Summary Tone and Style

Will Saletan employs a direct, incredulous, and sharply critical tone—peppered with sarcasm and unapologetic clarity. He fact-checks in real time, providing concrete examples and context, striving to arm the audience with facts against disinformation.

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If you missed the episode:
Will Saletan breaks down, with clarity and biting wit, exactly how prominent right-wing voices are manipulating the truth about Fauci and public health—offering both the factual corrections and the urgent warning that these lies continue to have deadly consequences.

Transcript

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[Will Saletan]

Hey, it's Will Salatan from the Bulwark. So you may have heard that Republicans got a hold of Anthony Fauci's diary, and this week they dragged him into a hearing in the Senate and they went after him. They said he got everything wrong in Covid and he ruined everyone's life. And he was a terrible person. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to set the record straight. I'm going to show you some of the lies they told. I'm going to show you how completely dishonest they are. Okay, let's start with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Secretary of Health. On Monday, Kennedy gave an interview to Laura Ingram on Fox News, and he said Fauci's diary shows that Fauci. Fauci got a pulmonary infarction, a blood clot in his lung from the Moderna COVID vaccine.

He got vaccinated a very, very public press conference in January of 2020. And then five months later, he had. And this is the first time that we knew this from the diary. He had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events that nih, CDC and FDA said are expected from the vaccine.

Okay, so first of all, Kennedy is. He's just lying when he claims that these agencies list pulmonary infarction as an expected side effect from the vaccine. Here is the CDC's list of common side effects from the vaccines. Soreness, fatigue, headache, fever. I don't know about you, but I got a little bit of fever from one of my vaccinations. That happens a lot. It's part of the reaction sometimes when your immune system responds to a vaccine. But here's the point. There's nothing about pulmonary infarction on this list. Kennedy told you there was, but there isn't. In fact, pulmonary infarction is not an expected adverse event from the vaccines. Why did Kennedy say it was? Because that's what he does. He makes things up. Okay, second point. Kennedy said Fauci got the blood clot five months after he got vaccinated. You don't get a blood clot from a shot five months after you got the shot. There's tons of research that shows that vaccine side effects, when they happen, happen within hours or days or at most weeks. And this is really important because one of the things that you're going to hear over and over from Kennedy and Laura Ingraham and other people who oppose the COVID shots is that anything bad that happens to anybody anytime after the shot was caused by the shot. They think that's proof that the shots are dangerous. And this example where Kennedy confidently tells you that a blood clot five months later after the shot came from the shot illustrates why you can't trust these people and anything they say about so called vaccine injuries. And by the way, in case you thought that Kennedy knew anything about health or science, let me show you what he told Sean Hannity on Wednesday about Fauci and his blood clot.

Then he got one of the primary, most expected adverse events which was potentially deadly blood clots in his lung. Mitocardial infarction.

Now, I don't know where to begin with this. There's no such thing as a mitochondrial infarction. Now there are mitochondria in your cells. That's a completely different thing. And there's something called a myocardial infarction, better known as a heart attack. Anyone who knows anything about medicine would know that a pulmonary infarction which happens in the lungs is different from a myocardial infarction which happens in the heart. Why did Kennedy get it mixed up? Because he's a complete ignoramus. And it's bad enough that Donald Trump made this idiot the Secretary of health. But what makes it worse is you now have an entire TV network, Fox News, spreading the same lies. For example, here is Jesse Waters, who has a primetime show on Fox, talking about Fauci.

[Jesse Waters]

He actually had a vaccine injury at one point and then he lied and said the vaccine's fine.

[Will Saletan]

Meanwhile, he had a clot, a vaccine injury. Waters says Fauci's clot was definitely a, a vaccine injury. Millions and millions of Americans are watching Fox News and they're being fed these lies. Okay, here's another one from Waters about Fauci's diary.

[Jesse Waters]

His favorite word, though not N95 or natural immunity. Those words barely uttered. It was press, press.

[Will Saletan]

Oh, honey, let me show you Dr. Fauci talking about N95s.

[Anthony Fauci]

But you've got to get a well fitted mask that has of a high quality and the two we know are high quality are an N95 or a KN95. So it's a combination. The best mask you can get and the order of gradation is N95, clearly the best KN95. Next, multiple ply surgical mask, then cloth masks if you get a good fit. Well, if you can tolerate an N95, do it.

[Will Saletan]

Nobody talked more about N95s than Fauci did. So why would Waters tell you that Fauci didn't talk about N95s? The answer is Waters is looking at Fauci's diary. A diary is where you put your private thoughts. Kennedy, Kennedy and the Republican senators and Fox News are telling you Fauci is a bad guy because he talked about himself in his diary, which, hello, is what a diary is now in public. Fauci didn't talk about himself in public. He talked about stuff like N95s because that was his job. But Waters doesn't want to tell you that. Waters wants to talk about the diary, not the public record. Look, it's not Fauci who wanted to tell everybody about his personal life. It's these scumbags who dug up the diary and plastered it all over tv. The dishonesty on Fox is just incredible. Let me show you another example. Here is Ingraham on Monday, America's doctor

[Laura Ingraham]

was a liar, a megalomaniac, a phony, and a total narcissist all rolled into one. Take what he said about the virus's lethality.

[Anthony Fauci]

The stated mortality overall of this, when you look at all the data, including China, is about 3%.

[Laura Ingraham]

3%. That's really bad. But in his private diary, only five weeks earlier, he admitted that the virus was not that lethal.

[Will Saletan]

3%. She says Fauci said 3%. But now I'm going to show you the part of his statement she cut off.

[Anthony Fauci]

The stated mortality overall of this, when you look at all the data, including China, is about 3%. It first started off as 2 and now 3. I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around 1%.

[Will Saletan]

Well, how about that? He was quoting the 3% so he could explain why that number was way too high. But Ingraham wanted to pretend that Fauci, that Fauci exaggerated the mortality rate, so she clipped out just the part she wanted. Another example of why you can't trust anything these people say. And while we're on the subject of taking things out of Context, check out what these guys said about schools. They claim that Fauci is the guy who kept kids out of school long after it was clear that children were the people at lowest risk from COVID Now, first of all, that is one of the biggest falsehoods of the whole pandemic. Fauci constantly, constantly said that kids should go back to school. Here he is in June of 2020. This is before school districts made their decisions about whether to bring kids back in the fall.

[Anthony Fauci]

Those are the kind of things that we need to consider, but also importantly, always make the goal that it is very important to get the children back to school for the unintended negative consequences that occur when we keep them out of school.

[Will Saletan]

I could show you dozens, dozens of other times Fauci made that point. But Fox doesn't want you to know about it. They want to talk about an entry in Fauci's diary where he wrote about closing the schools.

[Jesse Waters]

In his diary, he was bragging about shutting down the country. I spoke with Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, and convinced him, based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight, to close the NYC schools.

[Will Saletan]

Huh. Did you notice something missing there? Did you see a date on that quote? No. And did you hear Waters mention the date? No. Well, maybe that's because Fauci wrote that on March 15, 2020. That's not when schools were deciding whether to open for the fall or for the next two years. It was at the very beginning of the pandemic when everybody, including Trump, agreed that we should shut everything down for 15 days to see if we could stop the spread. But then within a couple of months, as I showed you, Fauci was telling Congress we should do everything we can to get the kids back to school. Now, probably, probably it's just an accident that Waters forgot to show you or tell you the date on that quote. I mean, Fox wouldn't try to do that again, would they?

[Laura Ingraham]

Foushee was bragging in his diary about his role getting lockdowns implemented. Here's what he wrote. Quote, I spoke with Bill de Blasio, that was the mayor of New York at the time, as you may know, and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to the close, to close the NYC schools.

[Will Saletan]

Oh, so. So now they're willing to tell you the year 2020. You could, you could see it right there at the top of the screen. But they still won't show you the date because that would show that Fauci's advice to close the schools was temporary at the very beginning of the pandemic. Instead, they keep telling you that Fauci, that Fauci tried to keep the schools closed for years.

[Jesse Waters]

Schools were shutted for years based off Fauci's recommendations.

[Will Saletan]

They, they're just liars and they've got plenty of friends in the GOP. Here is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. He's talking about Fauci on Fox News on Wednesday.

[Ron Johnson]

He would come down to Florida and do TV hits on local news, attacking me for mandating that schools be open.

[Will Saletan]

He came down to Florida. I've heard DeSantis say this a bunch of times. One time, somebody tried to clarify that DeSantis was talking about Fauci literally traveling to Florida, and DeSantis played along and implied that, yes, Fauci went to Florida to attack him, to attack desantis. That never happened. Fauci didn't set foot in Florida till June of 2021, a year after DeSantis opened the schools. I mean, it's a small thing, but it shows you how they just make stuff up.

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[Jesse Waters]

His diary does suggest, though, that he didn't want the vaccine approved before the election because it would help Trump and he may have played a role in delaying it.

[Will Saletan]

Now, there's a reason why Waters doesn't show you a quote to support that, and the reason is it. It's bullshit. Fauci never tried to delay the vaccines for any political reason. In fact, can we see that picture one more time? Look over there on the left. See that? That cute little fake picture of Fauci in pajamas with his diary. You see what he's holding there? It's. It's a syringe. Fox is trying to tell you simultaneously that Fauci tried to delay the vaccine and, and that he constantly pushed vaccines on the public. In fact, Waters says Fauci wanted to stab people.

[Jesse Waters]

Fauci downplayed natural immunity and over the counter so the vaccine companies could keep stabbing and jack up their stock price.

[Will Saletan]

So apparently Fauci wanted big Pharma to stab you, but not till after the 2020 election. And the other thing Waters said in that clip about Fauci downplaying over the counter drugs, that is a big Republican talking point. Okay, here is Senator Ron Johnson talking about what he says Fauci did about that.

[Ron Johnson]

Sabotaging early treatment with effective generic drugs so he get emergency use authorization on the gene therapy, experimental gene therapy, injection, Sabotaging treatment.

[Will Saletan]

Sabotaging treatment so he could get authorization for the vaccine. Johnson calls it gene therapy because Johnson doesn't understand what gene therapy is. But the main point here is Johnson is accusing Fauci of sabotage, of deliberately withholding medication to create an emergency so the government would approve the vaccines. Now, that's totally wrong. Fauci was promoting treatment the whole time. But it shows you how nuts Johnson and people like him are. They, they don't just think Fauci was wrong. They think he's the devil. In fact, they think Fauci created Covid.

[Ron Johnson]

All of his lies were basically a massive cover up of his involvement in the creation of the coronavirus. Or create a pandemic. You fund research that create a pandemic, and then the countermeasure kills and injures untold numbers of people.

[Will Saletan]

Wow. So Dr. Evil Fauci created the pandemic and then he also created the countermeasures. That's the vaccine which killed untold numbers. It's so diabolical. And if you think Johnson is alone in this nutty idea, think again. Here is Roger Marshall, another Republican senator. Anthony Fauci funded this, this virus and

[Jesse Waters]

it was leaked from the Wuhan laboratory in China.

[Will Saletan]

Roger Marshall is a doctor. He went to medical school, but apparently, apparently they didn't teach him genetics. Because the number one problem with this conspiracy theory that Fauci created Covid is that the virus on which Fauci funded research in China is so genetically different from the COVID virus that no amount of sorcery could have turned one into the other. There have been multiple, multiple fact checks on this. Like this one. Look, the viruses were a thousand nucleotides apart. They were just too different. The whole lab leak debate is an endless source of it. It's not that the lab leak theory itself is wrong. It could turn out in some form to be true. The is what these senators and their buddies on Fox Pile on top of the theory. Here's Waters telling you with a straight face that there's no dispute about lab leak.

[Jesse Waters]

We all know the virus came from a Chinese lab. There's no dispute over that.

[Will Saletan]

And here's Hannity telling you that Fauci in his diary endorsed the lab leak theory. He also seemed to believe that COVID 19 was more than likely man made in a lab in Wuhan, not created in a wet market with exotic animals. Despite stating the exact opposite on television to the public. No, nowhere in his diary did Fauci say that the virus was more than likely made in a lab. That is just another lie. So if these senators and their pals on Fox don't like the vaccines, don't like Fauci, what do they think we should have done during COVID Well, actually they have a solution. Here is what Laura Ingraham recommended while she was attacking Fauci on Monday.

[Laura Ingraham]

As the Angles medicine cabinet said repeatedly in 2020 and 2021, natural immunity through infection was the best way out of it.

[Will Saletan]

Natural immunity through infection, great idea. Let's do the math. So the population of the United States in April of 2020 was a little over 330 million.

[Tyler Redick]

Covid.

[Will Saletan]

Covid had a documented fatality rate of about 1%. Let's be generous. We'll assume that a lot of cases were mild, they were never detected. So maybe, maybe the real rate was more like half a percent. If 330 million people get an infection with a 0.5% risk of death, that is more than 1.6 million deaths, which is about 500,000 more than we actually had. So, so if we had listened to these geniuses at FOX and their buddies in Congress, half a million more Americans would have died. And, and if the fatality rate was really was like 1%, that would mean an extra 2 million Americans would have died. That, that is what Fauci and his, his cute little syringe, that is what he prevented. And what are these guys, these Fauci haters? What do they want us to do now after they throw Fauci in jail? What do they want to do about, you know, the diseases that we're dealing with now? Well, the first thing they recommend is don't do anything that public health officials tell you to do because it's all a conspiracy to take away your freedom and kill you. Here is Ron Johnson.

[Ron Johnson]

If we don't hold these people accountable, they'll do it again. You can see them trying to do it with monkeypox or this hantavirus or it's another bird flu. Whether it's Ebola, they create fear so that they can force these countermeasures on us. And by the way, the whole issue of creating countermeasures, this bioweaponry countermeasures, to me, it's a smoke stream to do bioweapon research itself.

[Will Saletan]

Look, I know science is complicated, but these people are nuts. They are delusional, they are dishonest, and they are extremely dangerous. The lies that they're telling you about Fauci are just a prelude to all the lies they're going to keep telling you about Ebola and Hantavirus and all the other threats that are coming at us. If everyone had listened to them instead of listening to Fauci, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are alive today would be dead. And if we listen to them next time, God knows how many more will die.

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