'SHAMEFUL': Nicolle puts Republicans on BLAST for JAW-DROPPING harassment of Dr. Fauci

[0:00] Watching Anthony Fauci before a congressional hearing taking the Fifth Amendment [0:08] is just one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government in my lifetime. [0:15] They want to prosecute him, they want to convict him, and they want to throw him in prison. [0:21] That's the point of this hearing. [0:24] There is no other point of this hearing. [0:26] We are in a Senator Joseph McCarthy climate where there is such fear that people have [0:37] and legitimate fear that they'll end up in prison for what they say. [0:42] We are in a dark period of America. [0:46] Sometimes it takes someone from outside of the immediate bubble to speak truth that pops that bubble. [0:55] That was the founder of TMZ, Harvey Levin, on the shameful display by Senate Republicans yesterday. [1:02] Just a small fraction of the overwhelming backlash Republicans received. [1:06] As Donald Trump and his allies try to do to Anthony Fauci what they've already done to Jim Comey, [1:12] Fish James, John Brennan, and other perceived political enemies of Donald Trump, [1:17] weaponizing the government. [1:18] And as Harvey Levin says there, trying to create a predicate for criminal prosecution of Anthony Fauci [1:26] for simply doing his job. [1:28] Former President Joe Biden went out of his way in the final days of his presidency to try to protect Fauci, [1:34] issuing him a blanket pardon. [1:36] Senate Republicans led by Rand Paul, who released excerpts of Fauci's personal diary in advance of the hearing, [1:43] dragged in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee in an attempt to get Fauci to perjure himself, [1:49] and get around that pardon. [1:52] Instead, Dr. Fauci refused to take the bait. [1:54] He pleaded the fifth for the duration of the hearing, [1:56] which Senate Republicans attempted to twist into some kind of admission of guilt. [2:00] If pleading the fifth is an admission of guilt, then someone should knock on Donald Trump's door. [2:06] He invoked it more than 450 times. [2:09] Rand Paul ejected Dr. Fauci's lawyer for attempting to answer a question, [2:14] and ended the hearing vowing to vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. [2:18] Joining our coverage is former deputy national security advisor to President Obama, [2:24] now co-host of Pod Save the World, our contributor Ben Rhodes. [2:27] Also joining us, former senior advisor to President Biden and Vice President Harris, [2:31] former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu's here. [2:34] He's now the co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century. [2:38] Mitch, I'll start with you. [2:39] I'm increasingly aware, I guess I'm always aware, of the fact that the world is watching, [2:46] that Americans pay attention to matters close to home, [2:52] but around the world, people, in a lot of instances, pay closer attention than we do. [2:57] And this is surely one of those stories on the front pages of a lot of newspapers around the country. [3:02] A scientist who was so revered by George W. Bush, President Obama and President Clinton. [3:08] A scientist who, even Harvey Levin talked about his history of saving lives at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. [3:18] Let me play some of that for you, too. [3:20] This is more Harvey Levin. [3:25] Anthony Fauci, over a period of decades, has been an amazing public servant. [3:33] In the 80s, I had many friends who died of AIDS, a horrible, painful death. [3:43] And I had friends who lived because of Anthony Fauci, [3:49] because he was willing to look at experimental drugs in a different way than they had looked at them before. [3:59] And that really resulted in lives saved. [4:03] And he has done so many other things in his career to thwart epidemics, [4:11] to save lives, not just in the United States, but all over the world. [4:20] Mitch, it says something sad when the defense of Anthony Fauci doesn't come from Washington, [4:26] that it comes from the founder of TMZ. [4:30] First of all, I agree with Harvey Levin. [4:33] I think Anthony Fauci is one of the great doctors of my time. [4:38] For those of us that remember the AIDS crisis and had friends die from that, [4:42] the work that Dr. Fauci did back then and the work that he continued throughout his career has just been exemplary. [4:50] I think he's an American hero. [4:52] Just to remind people, over a million people died in the United States from COVID. [4:56] And as I recall, I think Donald Trump was president at the time. [5:00] I would also just like to point out that Senator Rand Paul is an eye doctor. [5:05] He's not an infectious disease specialist. [5:08] And Anthony Fauci is. [5:10] That hearing yesterday was a travesty of justice. [5:13] It was an embarrassment to the United States of America and to the American people. [5:18] They should be ashamed of themselves for taking him through that. [5:21] What they should have had a hearing about was how the nation can better prepare for the next pandemic that's coming [5:28] so that we don't lose that many American lives. [5:30] And I think American people watched that yesterday and concluded that these people are not only banal, [5:36] but they actually have completely lost focus on what the American people need [5:40] and what they want to keep them safe and their kids safe in the future. [5:47] Ben Rhodes, your thoughts? [5:48] I want to pick up on something, Mitch, because, look, we can and should defend Dr. Fauci against these attacks. [5:57] But Donald Trump was president of the United States this entire time period that they're focused on. [6:03] Nicole, you've rightly pointed out repeatedly that all of his conspiracies about the 2020 election [6:09] cover a time period when he was in charge of the United States government during that electoral period. [6:14] And so there's just something truly absurd about the fact that Donald Trump, as president of the United States, [6:21] is totally unaccountable for anything that they think went wrong with the COVID response. [6:27] We're going to put everything on this one person, Dr. Fauci, because he kind of represents the, I don't know, [6:33] the scientific establishment or something, when the reality is if they're mad about the origins of COVID [6:39] and Donald Trump is in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence community at that time. [6:42] He could have put out assessments. [6:45] Donald Trump was in charge of Project Warp Speed to develop the vaccine. [6:49] And so all these conspiracy theories and all these allegations that they level at Fauci, [6:56] well, the person in charge of all that was Donald Trump. [6:59] And so it just speaks to the absurdity of this. [7:01] Nicole, they're not speaking to the American people. [7:03] They're speaking to like the third of the American population that is kind of locked in a right-wing media ecosystem bubble, [7:12] where the whole point is to not focus on the things that people care about in their lives, [7:19] like the cost of living, like the war in Iran that has no end in sight, [7:24] like an economy that is increasingly for a very small number of rich people at the top. [7:29] They just have to focus on whoever the villain of the week is to fill up the airtime and generate a lot of content. [7:37] I mean, these are not people going to legislate or conduct oversight. [7:41] They're people going to have viral clips in some deep recess of the right-wing media ecosystem [7:47] with the total intellectual and logical incoherence of the fact that they're yelling about a government response [7:54] that was led by not Anthony Fauci, but Donald Trump, their cult leader, you know, and it's totally ridiculous. [8:01] But the reason we have to take it seriously is that there are real consequences. [8:05] They're trying to destroy people's lives and they're trying to criminalize people they don't like [8:10] just for the views that they've taken. [8:12] And that's why I think we do have to take it seriously.