Why MAGA Is Obsessed with Dr. Fauci

If you watched the video, you already know what the scapegoat mechanism is and why it explains the Trump administration’s obsession with Anthony Fauci better than any political explanation ever will. This Substack goes deeper into the research, the timeline, and why a man who advised six presidents on infectious disease became the most hated person in the Republican Party for doing his job.The DiaryOn July 27, 2026, Senator Rand Paul released over a thousand pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal diary entries from December 2019 through December 2022. Paul framed the release as evidence that Fauci’s private views contradicted his public statements. He posted the entries on X under the heading “Tony’s Diary” and made them available through his committee reading room as part of his ongoing investigation into the origins of COVID-19.The diary revealed a scientist wrestling with a crisis in real time. Fauci wrote about disagreements with Trump over hydroxychloroquine. He wrote about his frustration with the administration’s tendency to minimize the threat. He wrote about his own sudden celebrity and the strange experience of becoming the most recognized public health official in American history.What the diary did not reveal is any evidence that Fauci covered up the origins of COVID-19, lied to the public about gain-of-function research, or conspired to suppress information about a lab leak. STAT News reported that the documents “offer no proof that the pandemic originated from a lab or that Fauci or any other officials worked to cover it up.” NPR confirmed the same. Virologist Robert Garry at Tulane University stated that there is “no actual evidence” for a connection between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the start of the pandemic.None of this matters to the people who want Fauci destroyed. And there is a psychological reason for that.The Scapegoat MechanismRené Girard was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science who spent most of his career at Stanford University. In 1972, he published “Violence and the Sacred,” a work that introduced his theory of the scapegoat mechanism to the academic world and fundamentally changed the study of collective violence.Girard’s central insight is that human communities resolve internal conflict through a specific, recurring pattern. When a group is in crisis, when tensions are rising and the group is at risk of tearing itself apart, the group unconsciously converges on a single individual or minority group to blame. All of the group’s anxiety, guilt, shame, and aggression is projected onto this target. The target is then punished, expelled, or destroyed. And the act of collective punishment temporarily restores order and unity to the group.The critical feature of the scapegoat mechanism is that the target does not need to be guilty. The target is not chosen because of evidence. The target is chosen because the group needs someone to carry what it cannot carry itself. The scapegoat absorbs the sins of the community so the community never has to examine its own.Girard found that the scapegoat mechanism operates most powerfully when the group is unable or unwilling to confront the real source of the crisis. If the real source is too powerful, too diffuse, or too implicating of the group itself, the group will find a substitute. Someone close enough to the crisis to be plausible but vulnerable enough to be punished without consequence.Anthony Fauci is that substitute.The Real Source of the CrisisOver one million Americans died from COVID-19. That is the crisis. And the real source of that crisis is not difficult to identify.In 2018, the Trump administration disbanded the National Security Council’s global health security team, a unit specifically created to prepare for pandemics. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, eliminated the directorate as part of a broader reorganization. Beth Cameron, who had led the unit under Obama, warned publicly that the move left the country vulnerable.In January 2020, as reports of a novel coronavirus emerged from China, Trump was briefed multiple times on the threat. He publicly downplayed it. On January 22, he told CNBC, “We have it totally under control.” On February 26, he said, “Within a couple of days, it is going to be down to close to zero.” On February 28, he called it a “hoax” at a rally. On March 10, he told reporters, “Just stay calm. It will go away.”It did not go away. By mid-March, the country was in crisis. And Trump’s response to that crisis became a catalogue of public health failures.He promoted hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” despite no evidence that it was effective against COVID-19. His own scientists told him this. Fauci told him directly in a White House meeting. Fauci wrote in his diary: “I took a deep breath and said that this was wrong and should not be done.” Trump promoted it anyway, including tweeting to 84 million followers that it could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”He suggested that injecting disinfectant might kill the virus. On April 23, 2020, during a nationally televised briefing, Trump asked whether there was a way to bring “light inside the body” or inject “disinfectant” to clean the lungs. Poison control centers across the country reported spikes in calls.He turned masks into a partisan statement. When the CDC recommended mask-wearing, Trump refused to wear one publicly for months. His supporters followed. Masks became a symbol of political identity rather than a public health measure.He held rallies during the pandemic. Large indoor gatherings with no social distancing and no mask requirements, directly contradicting the guidance of his own public health officials.He pressured states to reopen before their case counts had declined. He publicly attacked governors who maintained restrictions. He tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA” in April 2020, encouraging protests against lockdown measures.The result was catastrophic. The United States, with roughly four percent of the world’s population, suffered approximately twenty percent of the world’s COVID deaths during the first year of the pandemic.That is the real source of the crisis. And the Trump administration cannot face it. So they found a scapegoat.Why FauciGirard wrote that the scapegoat must have a specific relationship to the crisis. The target must be close enough to the events to be plausible but vulnerable enough to be punished. The target must also be different from the group in some identifiable way. Girard called these “marks of the victim” and found that scapegoats throughout history share common characteristics: they are outsiders, intellectuals, minorities, or individuals who hold positions that make them visible but not powerful enough to fight back.Fauci fits every criterion.He was the most visible scientist in the country during the pandemic. His face was on television every night. He became the public embodiment of the COVID response, even though he had no authority to set policy, close businesses, or mandate anything. He was an adviser. He gave recommendations. The decisions were made by elected officials.He was an intellectual in an anti-intellectual movement. He spoke in the language of science: data, evidence, clinical trials, peer review. That language was incomprehensible and threatening to a political base that had been told for years that experts are the enemy.He disagreed with Trump. Publicly. Repeatedly. On hydroxychloroquine. On the timeline for the virus disappearing. On masks. On reopening. In an interview, Fauci later said: “I couldn’t stand there and be complicit in saying hydroxychloroquine works when it doesn’t, bleach works when it doesn’t, the virus is going to go away like magic when it’s not.” He acknowledged that his public disagreements created “a growing enmity” from Trump and his allies. He did not back down. “In order to maintain my own scientific and personal integrity, and most importantly, fulfill my responsibility to the American public, I had to do that.”For a narcissist who cannot tolerate being contradicted, that was the unforgivable sin. Fauci told the truth when Trump was lying. And the truth made Trump look incompetent. So Fauci had to be destroyed.The PunishmentThe punishment has been relentless and escalating.During the pandemic, Fauci and his family received constant death threats. His three daughters, living in three separate cities, were harassed at their jobs and at home. Fauci was forced to hire a security detail for his family. Someone sent him a letter filled with an unknown powder. He described the moment: “I just looked at it all over me and said, ‘What do I do?’ The security detail was there and they said, ‘Don’t move, stay in the room.’ And they got the hazmat people.” The powder turned out to be harmless. But Fauci acknowledged the fear: “It was frightening.”In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in federal prison for sending threatening messages to Fauci, including one telling the scientist he would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed.”Fauci said the death threats spike every time a Republican lawmaker or conservative media personality attacks him. He specifically cited Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene saying on the House floor that he should be “prosecuted for crimes against humanity.” Fauci told CNN: “When you have performances like that, those are the kinds of things that drive up the death threats because there are a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense.”In 2025, Trump pulled Fauci’s government-funded security detail, leaving a man who had received death threats for five years without the protection that the federal government had determined he needed.In September 2025, Rand Paul issued a formal letter to Fauci accusing him of directing NIH employees to destroy federal records and claiming the evidence contradicted his previous congressional testimony. Paul invited Fauci to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.In July 2026, Paul released Fauci’s diary. The diary contained nothing that supported Paul’s claims. Fauci is scheduled to testify on July 30, 2026.The investigation has produced no evidence of wrongdoing. The diary has produced no evidence of a cover-up. Virologists have confirmed there is no proven link between NIH-funded research and the origin of the pandemic. And the investigation continues.Because the investigation was never about evidence. It was about the scapegoat.The FunctionGirard found that scapegoating serves a specific psychological and social function. It allows the group to experience catharsis without self-examination. The group’s failures are transferred to the scapegoat. The scapegoat is punished. And the group walks away feeling that justice has been done, without ever confronting its own role in the crisis.Dr. Fauci said get vaccinated. Republicans said no.Dr. Fauci said wear masks. Republicans said no.Dr. Fauci said socially distance. Republicans said no.A million Americans died. Republicans said prosecute Fauci.That is the scapegoat mechanism operating at national scale. The people who rejected every public health measure, who turned masks into a culture war, who protested lockdowns, who spread misinformation about vaccines, who held rallies during a pandemic, who elected a president who told them to inject bleach, are now prosecuting the scientist who tried to save their lives.They are not doing this because the evidence supports it. They are doing it because a million people died and the people responsible cannot look in the mirror.Fauci is not being investigated because he did something wrong. He is being investigated because he did something unforgivable in the eyes of a narcissist and the cult that worships him.He told the truth.SourcesGirard, R. (1972). “Violence and the Sacred.” Johns Hopkins University Press.Girard, R. (1986). “The Scapegoat.” Johns Hopkins University Press.STAT News (2026). “Anthony Fauci Senate Testimony: New Peril on Old Covid Questions.” July 28, 2026.NPR (2026). “Rand Paul Releases Anthony Fauci’s Pandemic-Era Diary Notes. Here’s What They Tell Us.” July 27, 2026.Washington Post (2026). “Fauci’s Diary Released, Revealing His Thoughts on Fame and ‘Rambling’ Trump.” July 28, 2026.Newsweek (2026). “Fauci to Testify About COVID Pandemic: What His Diaries Reveal.” July 28, 2026.Forbes (2021). “’It Wasn’t Just Hydroxychloroquine’: Fauci Says Trump’s Covid Response Was Based on Anecdotal Evidence.” January 26, 2021.ABC News (2020). “Tracking Trump and Fauci’s Tense Relationship.” July 16, 2020.ABC News (2020). “Timeline: Tracking Trump Alongside Scientific Developments on Hydroxychloroquine.” August 9, 2020.NPR (2020). “Fauci Reveals He Has Received Death Threats and His Daughters Have Been Harassed.” August 5, 2020.NBC News/Today (2021). “Dr. Fauci Describes Death Threats and Opening ‘Disturbing’ Letter Filled with Powder.” January 25, 2021.CNN (2020). “Dr. Fauci Says His Daughters Need Security as Family Continues to Get Death Threats.” August 5, 2020.Yahoo News (2025). “Trump Pulls Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Security Detail.”Paul, R. (2025). Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci, September 9, 2025, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.Cameron, B. (2020). “I Ran the White House Pandemic Office. Trump Closed It.” Washington Post, March 13, 2020. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lucasbean.substack.com/subscribe