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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Single Gesture Behind Trump Fuels an Online Conspiracy Theory
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci after President Trump referred to the Deep State Department at a briefing on March 20.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administrations most outspoken advocate of emergency virus measures, has become the target of claims that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.
By Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel
March 28, 2020, 12:31 p.m. ET
At a White House briefing on the coronavirus on March 20, President Trump called the State Department the Deep State Department. Behind him, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dropped his head and rubbed his forehead.
Some thought Dr. Fauci was slighting the president, leading to a vitriolic online reaction. On Twitter and Facebook, a post that falsely claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Mr. Trump was soon shared thousands of times, reaching roughly 1.5 million people.
A week later, Dr. Fauci the administrations most outspoken advocate of emergency measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.
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An analysis by The New York Times found over 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud, with some tweeting as frequently as 795 times a day. The anti-Fauci sentiment is being reinforced by posts from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group; Bill Mitchell, host of the far-right online talk show YourVoice America; and other outspoken Trump supporters such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who has falsely claimed to be the inventor of email.
Many of the anti-Fauci posts, some of which pointed to a seven-year-old email that Dr. Fauci had sent praising Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State, have been retweeted thousands of times. On YouTube, conspiracy-theory videos about Dr. Fauci have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the past week. In private Facebook groups, posts disparaging him have also been shared hundreds of times and liked by thousands of people, according to the Times analysis.
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Their paranoia and stupidity will get them killed.
The Magistrate
(95,252 posts)It is like something out a bad Doctor Who episode....
UTUSN
(70,725 posts)undermining SHITLER - could he speed up the process, please?!1
Takket
(21,616 posts)when "where's Fauci" was trending on twitter when he was missing from a press conference the other day, i ready a tweet from a drumpf supporter (which could also mean is is a russian bot) saying "he was removed for trying to undermine the president". obviously nonsense since Fauci was back the next day.... but this insane conspiracy theory is for real......
underpants
(182,868 posts)The stoopid it hurts
uponit7771
(90,359 posts)gibraltar72
(7,510 posts)central scrutinizer
(11,659 posts)Of undermining himself daily as anybody with an IQ above room temperature can plainly see.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)Those subscriptions to Popular Delusions Magazine are not going to work out well for them and we have to deal with the breakdowns and mayhem. They contribute to what is most problematic right now on many levels.
The delusions gush out and get sticky and spray everywhere like a disease and that leaves us to walk around the paranoid droppings the Dunning-Kruger U. folks leave everywhere. Oh, humans can be very neurotic, but we are seeing the brink of mass insanity in some cases with extreme, delusional paranoia as the result. Not only that, but the religious like factors are there. "They" is the God/Satan replacement and the Evil Cabal is the enemy. The sacred words are legion, like: 5G, bio-weapons, plots, genocide, Illuminati, Globalists, etc. and are attached to other words to make them a canon of the high priests on social media, YT, etc.
Granted their are actual conspiracies, and always have been. However, they leave evidence and Big Fish tales and ripping yarns don't rely on fact-finding or evidence, they rely on knee-jerk, emotive, reactionary, "Sounds right to me!" behavior. The focus on belief over knowledge makes the growing number of conspiracy theory devotees marks for the kind of manipulation that they can't see coming because the conspiracy IS the conspiracy theories.
Strange times indeed. A new kind of mass religion is born. How many steps away is that from the logic as to why witches should be burned?
AleksS
(1,665 posts)The fact that it is face-palmingly stupid for the GD president of the US to publicly spout stupid shit like Deep State Department hurrr hurrr hurrr doesnt even cross their minds, does it?
What is wrong with these people?
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)is now hiding out in the basement of a Pizza place with Hillary where they continue to plot the death of the Trump administration while snacking on pieces of dead children. Good riddance, I say.
(if necessary)
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)a migraine' is a sure fire way of predicting
with a 100% positive correlation
which expert governmental officials are engaging in the thought crime of knowing
that tRump should not be in power, and never should have been.
It's a whole plot conspiracy thing.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)(I'm not using an NYT view to look at what appears to be a horrible "it's OK if you're a Republican" article).