They have to keep their base angry because they've conditioned their brains to be addicted to anger dopamine. They're hooked and if they don't stay angry, they get harder to manipulate. Because of the addiction they want to be angry, that's why they're always angry at seemingly trivial shit.

The noise aimed at Hillary died down significantly once it was clear she'd given up on the presidency.

Fauci was a predominant expert that made their Dear Leader look like the complete dumbass that he is, and they cannot have it.

Eh. He was the guy in charge of an agency the GOP doesn't like and he championed a policy - vaccination - that the QAnon crowd despised. At the time, he was fully in alignment with Trump on policy. He wasn't making Trump look like a dumbass. If anything "Operation Warpspeed" made Trump look exceptionally competent. We really did trailblaze a new method of engineering vaccinations and roll them out in record time. And I can't help but think Trump's natural phobia towards illness played a role in getting HHS and CDC a sudden infusion of needed funding.

But then the MAGA crowd decided vaccination was some kind of evil government conspiracy, more or less independent of anything Trump was saying at the time. And anti-vax hysteria ripped through the GOP like its own kind of disease. Biden inherited COVID and continued a vaccination policy, which made vaccinations "Democrat" coded and double-plus evil as a result.

So Fauci was turned into a scapegoat within the GOP. Trump threw him under the bus to appease his base. And now the GOP is whipping him to appease their own rabid, deranged voter base, because its something they can do on the eve of mid-term elections to distract from the economy and Epstein and Iran and a dozen other unpopular socio-economic turns.

And yes, I think the Democrats absolutely should drag every single member of Donvict’s circle into hearings to answer for their words and their actions.

I mean, I think so too. I just don't think they'll actually put these folks in prison over anything they uncover.

Just like after 2020, the Dem response to the GOP was to yell "Vote Blue No Matter Who" and then blame the stupid voters when Garland's DOJ failed to deliver any indictments.

OK, let’s say covid did come from a lab leak. Would that have changed, in any way, how the pandemic was handled?

The presumption is that China caused COVID, not domestic health policy. And that by falling to acknowledge Wuhan as the proximate cause of COVID, we are ignoring the clear and present danger of Chinese immigrants, Chinese trade, and interstate travel to the Chinese mainland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eexbPn5u8uo

I'm going to yes-and your post.

You got me as to the legality of their claims.

The conservatives are bound and determined to try every bit of clown shoes performative bullshit if they think it will help them and hurt others, though.

Certainly they don't care about the truth or any of that. They had to wear masks and see schools and businesses closed down, even if it saved lives. Worst of all, the liberals and experts like Fauci were proven right about Covid, and Donvict was proven wrong, and that is unforgivable to them. So they'll lie and deflect and try every possible method to "get" people like Fauci.

All while they turn a blind eye to the obvious and blatant fraud and self-enrichment that Donvict and his crime family are doing right now.

Once upon a time (let's say prior to 2016), it was generally accepted precedent that accepting a pardon was an admission of guilt.

So I believe the idea is that you've already forfeited your fifth amendment right by admitting guilt.

I could be wrong.

It also doesn't matter anymore because after one of Trump's early pardons (honestly forget which, there are so many awful ones. Maybe Mike Flynn?), they were kind of just like "yeah no it doesn't equal an admission of guilt, that was never really precedent". Which apparently was true. It turns out our entire country ran on gentlemen's agreements for nearly 200 years but that's a separate discussion.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/236/79/