Tucker Carlson attacks Dr. Fauci for “authoritarian” pandemic response guidelines

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From the August 6, 2020 edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight:

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Back then, a little over seven months ago, the U.S. felt politically volatile. It definitely was, there was an election coming, but it still felt fundamentally American. There was no mistaking this country for any other country. We weren't Mexico or Luxembourg  or Burundi. We definitely weren't China. Yes, most of our consumer goods did seem to be manufactured in Asia but our way of life, our system, our society, seemed to be the very opposite of China's.

The Chinese were enslaved. We were free. That was the difference and it was permanent. It would never change. Not one in a thousand Americans doubted that. In January, for example, Dr. Anthony Fauci at the time, not yet a household name, did an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association to talk about America's response to the Wuhan coronavirus. Fauci explained the authoritarian measures the Chinese government had taken to contain that virus. Then Fauci noted, almost offhandedly, that in American, none of that would be allowed. Watch. 

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As you well know, there is no chance in the world that we could do that to Chicago or to New York or to San Francisco. That's what Fauci said. Note his use of the word "to." The Chinese government was doing these things to its people. Not for them. In other words, these were punishments, not remedies, and none of that would ever be allowed here in a free country. It just couldn't happen in America. Fauci's words seem quaint now, like a fax machine or a black and white photograph.

Fauci himself has since become one of the most strident advocates of a Chinese response to coronavirus, but he's hardly alone in that.