Persecuting and Prosecuting on Vibes
MAGA doesn't know what crimes Anthony Fauci committed. They just know they want him in prison. This trend will not end well.
Everything that is wrong with American politics can be summed up by this week’s kangaroo court Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing, where Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate. Sort of.
The hearing, of course, consisted of a group of MAGA Senators getting their coveted TV time and their flowers from the marks who make up the modern Republican Electorate, all while Fauci, under the advice of counsel, took the Fifth.
The bizarre spectacle became even more farcical when Fauci’s lawyer was kicked out of the hearing.
There was a lot of Sturm und Drang over Fauci’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment during his testimony. Some people (including me) initially wondered why Fauci would be allowed to take the Fifth after receiving a pardon from President Joe Biden for any crimes committed from 2014 to 2024. But, once it became clear that Fauci did not have congressional immunity, the entire purpose of the hearing was to get Fauci to contradict his previous Congressional testimony so he could be criminally referred for lying under oath.
Since he invokved the Fifth, they plan on prosecuting him anyway. For Contempt of Congress.
Many of the terminally online MAGA supporters are all in on sending Fauci to prison. They come up with many fanciful reasons for wanting to do so. They suggest that it was Fauci who locked down the country during COVID (though he was not President during COVID). They suggest that Fauci created COVID as part of gain-of-function research (without providing evidence). They even suggest that Fauci is a mass murderer who killed more people than the Nazis in World War II. The hyperbole is off the charts.
What’s clear is that COVID broke people, usually the same people who claimed that COVID was not dangerous and treating COVID as a serious problem was an imposition upon their liberty. They never seem to be able to square the circle as to why Fauci should be imprisoned for crimes against humanity for a disease that was “not dangerous”
But the Fauci persecution and prosecution isn’t about reality. It’s about vibes. MAGA felt inconvenienced by COVID and needs a scapegoat to blame. They have been conditioned for years to suggest that not only Fauci belongs in jail, but that anybody who impedes Donald Trump and his administration belong in jail.
Name a Democrat, and MAGA wants them in jail. Name a Never Trump conservative, and MAGA wants them in jail. Name a government official who tells Trump no, and MAGA wants them in jail.
The problem is, those people who want people who tell Trump no to be in jail are the same people that Trump appointed to key positions in the government. Why else would James Comey have been indicted for a picture of seashells? Donald Trump is still butthurt about Comey’s actions from his first administration and wanted to see Comey pay for it. But Fauci and Comey are hardly the only victims of this malicious prosecution. It’s not even Comey’s first rodeo.
There’s Letitia James, and Adam Schiff, and the sandwich guy, and the Olympic canoer at the Reflecting Pool that just got dismissed, and the “immigration crimes” in Minnesota. And there are still dozens of more people that Trump, his entourage, or MAGA insist should be investigated or jailed. Jamie Raskin. Joe Biden. The people behind Act Blue. Flag burners. People who ‘sabotage’ Teslas. People who oppose the SAVE Act. The Mayor of Chicago.
I agree politically with practically none of these people. But the fact that Trump has chosen to drag them through the mud and into the legal system becuase he has a sad is beyond absurd, especially considering how many convicts Trump pardoned for their involvement in the January 6th coup d’etat.
The problem facing America is multifaceted. We have rampant, hyperpartisan activists who want to see their political opponents be jailed regardless of the legality and Constitutionality of the charges. We have a rising MAGA opposition of Democratic Socialists whose contempt for the Constitution and the legal process is equal to that of MAGA. We have, in the Biden Administration, the normalization of blanket pardons for members of the Administration, something that Trump will be granting to his team in January 2029. And we have a Pandora's box that has been opened for any future administration to prosecute their opponents criminally or use government resources to harass them.
We have reached a stage of American governance where people are being prosecuted based on vibes. And that is no way a functional republic can stand.