Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: anthony fauci

A Partial Transcript Of Peter Navarro’s Appearance On The Katy Tur Show, 7/15/20

“Good morning to all you MSNBC viewers out there, which means good morning to 70-year old liberals, Twitter-famous layabouts hoping for a trainwreck, and…huh, I can’t think up a third one. I understand watching Fox or CNN, but who the hell would choose MSNBC? It’s like going to Hardee’s when there’s a McDonald’s and a Burger King right across the street. But hey: You’re here, I’m here, let’s do this. My guest is the White House’s Director of Trade Policy, Peter Navarro.”

“I’m also in charge of the Defense Production Act, and the President let me have a sip of his Diet Coke once.”

“Why would you want to drink from someone else’s glass?”

“I had a theory that the Diet Coke’s possession by the President would make it taste better than Diet Coke owned by, say, a poor person. Executive transubstantiation, if you will. And I was right! I wish President Trump could just spit all my beverages into my mouth.”

“Ew.”

“I tasted heaven that afternoon, Katy.”

“Let’s get to the point: You recently wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Post entitled ‘Anthony Fauci Has Been Wrong About Everything I Have Interacted With Him On.’ Can you share with us some of the disagreements you’ve had with Dr. Fauci?”

“It’s not so much individual disagreements as it is two opposing worldviews, one of which is wrong. We fundamentally disagree on the topic of the coronavirus. He’s just a doomer, man. Can’t go to ball games. Can’t go to discotheques. I’m sure you can guess how he feels about the Chinese buffet place. You know the one I’m talking about. Usually in the same strip mall with a supermarket. And not entirely Chinese. I mean, the owners are Chinese and there’s Chinese crap all over the walls, but the food’s from everywhere. Chinese buffet by me has pizza and cupcakes.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, it speaks to the congenital disrespect that the Chinese have for our Intellectual Properties.”

“Congenital?”

“Oh, yeah.  Every Chinaman is a born bootlegger.”

“Do not use that kind of language on my show, Mr. Navarro.”

“What? Chinaman?”

“Yes.”

“How is that wrong? If someone called me an Americaman, I’d be like ‘Damn straight, brother.'”

“We were discussing your op-ed about Dr. Fauci.”

“Perfidious sheep-shagger.”

“That’s a bold accusation.”

“The adjective or the noun?”

“The whole phrase. What exactly have you and Dr. Fauci differed on?”

“The science, Katy! It’s all about the science.”

“What about the science?

“He wants to pay attention to it, and I say we ignore it.”

“Ah.”

“What has science ever done for us, anyway?”

“Provided us with civilization?”

“What about lately? What has science done for us lately? You know there hasn’t been a new Dr. Pepper flavor introduced in ten years? Science has dropped the ball, Katy. Time to cut it loose.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

“All of my ideas are great. Just this morning, I had a spectacular idea.”

“What was it?”

“Shooting war with China.”

“God, no! That’s the worst idea in the entire world.”

“It would be a license to print money, Katy. Nothing gooses the economy like a good war.”

“Speaking of the economy, Mr. Navarro: You were trained as an economist, and have worked in the field your whole career, correct?”

“Yup.”

“So how are you qualified to comment on Dr. Fauci’s medical opinions?”

“Lemme tell you a little secret, Katy: Being a doctor is 90% bullshit. You wear your little coat, hit people’s knees with your stupid hammer, and tell ’em to quit smoking and lose some weight. There’s nothing to it.”

“Nothing you said was correct.”

“According to who? Experts? Scientists? Smaaaaaaaaaaaart people? Aren’t you tired of this tyranny of the clever?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re a sheep, Katy. Hot sheep, but still a sheep. The fact is that Anthony Fauci is in cahoots with MS-13, and also maybe a Terminator.”

“What now?”

“Cyborg assassin from the future. Maybe SkyNet sent him to kill all of us. That’s a lot more difficult than just killing one lady. You’d have to finesse that one. What better way to murder America than to take control of its health apparatus? Crafty little bugger, I’ll give him that. Faucinator plays the long game.”

“Don’t call him that. Dr. Fauci is not a killer robot from the future.”

“Cyborg. If it was just a robot, it couldn’t make it through the time portal.”

“Anthony Fauci is a human being from the present. Your allegations are absurd.”

“Absurd? How is trying to save America from a werewolf absurd?”

“I am also accusing Dr. Fauci of being a werewolf.”

“Dammit, Navarro.”

“If he’s not a werewolf, then why does he fear being shot with a silver bullet?”

“Have you–”

“Threatened! Just threatened! There has been no gunplay in President Trump’s White House, and we never get any credit for that.”

“There’s not supposed to be gunplay anywhere!”

“Katy, this is America. Now who’s being absurd?”

“Do you have any other complaints about Dr. Fauci?”

“The President asked me to point out that Dr. Fauci is of Italian descent, and you know how those people are. Always stuff falling off the backs of trucks around them.”

“That is breathtakingly racist.”

“I am pointing out a fact, Katy. You can’t argue with numbers, and the numbers say that all Italians are mobbed up.”

“They are not! Stop that!”

“I’d trust a Jewish doctor, but an Italian one? C’mon. He probably got his tongue depressors from his cousin.”

“We’re going to commercial.”

“Some ethnicities are trustworthy, and some aren’t! That is the official position of the American government!”

“Go to commercial!”

A Partial Transcript Of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Congressional Testimony, 6/30/20

GAVEL NOISE!

“Settle down, settle down. Hey! Jordan! Knock it off with the wedgies.”

“Cry about it, pussy.”

“You’re not even a member of this committee!”

“And yet I still banged your mom.”

GAVEL NOISE!

“Just shut up. I’m calling this hearing to order. For the reporters in attendance, I am the Chair, Frank Pallone from New Jersey. I don’t blame you for not knowing who I am. Anyhoo: this morning, the House Energy & Commerce Committee will hear updates on the United States’ pandemic response from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Thank you for coming, Dr. Fauci.”

“It’s nice to be anywhere that Jared Kushner can’t reach me. That young man is full of notions. They’re not quite ideas. Notions. And, uh, he likes to call and pitch them to me.”

“Can you share any of these notions with the committee?”

“Not specifically, but the theme of most of them was ‘Let’s negotiate with the virus.'”

“Can one negotiate with a virus?”

“One cannot.”

“Dr. Fauci, can you give us a snapshot of how the country’s doing today?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. A snapshot taken of the nation currently would almost certainly be one of those haunted photographs from a Stephen King story where the monster gets closer every time you look at it. Or it would suck you into a perpendicular dimension or something.”

“No one wants that.”

“You’d think.”

“What about a summation?”

“I can do that: We’re super-fucked. Two more weeks of this? Super-duper-fucked. And that’s my professional opinion. I would write that on a chart.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Jesus.”

“I will yield to my distinguished colleagues for questions, then. Chair recognizes Mr. McKinley from West Virginia.”

“Thank you, northern scum. Good morning, Doctor…Fah-OOSY? Fakey?”

“FOW-chi.”

“What an exotic name! We ain’t got names like that back in the holler. You must be Eye-talian.”

“I am of Italian descent, Congressman.”

“Lotta folks think Eye-talians are white. A lotta people think that.”

“All right, then. I got just one question for you, Doc.”

“I look forward to answering it.”

“It’s multi-part, and is more of an ‘easily-avoidable conversational trap’ than a ‘question,’ but I’m gonna just plow ahead. Doc, it has ben reported that you are a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.”

“That is true.”

“Dr. Fucky–”

“Fauci.”

“–in 2009, you believed that the Yankees had won the World Series the previous year.”

“I did.”

“And yet by 2010, you no longer believed that the Yankees had won the World Series the previous year.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which is it, sir? How can anyone trust you when your opinion changed so rapidly?”

“My beliefs adjusted to match the facts of reality.”

“Or maybe you’re just a liar who hates the economy?”

GAVEL NOISE

“Enough! The Chair demands that the Congressman stop berating the witness.”

“I’ll fuck that boy up.”

GAVEL NOISE!

“Stop that! You’re silenced. Dr. Fauci, I apologize for my colleague’s accusations.”

“No worries. Once again: This is so much better than my day-to-day work. You know that every single time the Corona Task Force meets, Bill Barr bursts into the room like the Kool-Aid Man and starts whaling us with tennis balls? Guy’s got a cannon on him. Why do you think Birx always wears a scarf? It’s because Barr aims for the neck.”

“That’s the single most unprofessional thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“It doesn’t further our work. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s leave it at that.”

BRILLO-HEADED “LIBERTARIAN” DOOFUS FALLING FROM THE DROP CEILING NOISE

“Oh, for God’s sake, Senator Paul.”

“I’m in!”

“You could’ve used the door.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To take away my right to infiltrate a House hearing via the ducting system, Die Hard-style?”

“That’s not a right. That is absolutely not a right.”

“YOU’RE A STATIST, PALOOKA!”

“Pallone.”

“PEPPERONI!”

“I’m gonna need everyone to knock it off with the anti-Italian racism right now, thank you. Why are you here, Senator Paul?”

“Me and Fauci are going nose-to-nose, man. It’s Go Time.”

“It is not Go Time, Rand.”

“I DEMAND THAT GO TIME BE RECOGNIZED!”

“If I give you five minutes, will you leave afterwards?”

“Yes, but only if I’m allowed to take the ducts.”

“Fine.”

“And I’m gonna need a boost back up to the ceiling.”

“Fine, you can have a boost. Five minutes.”

“Thank you. Dr. Fauci, I don’t have a bone to pick with you, I got the entire skeleton.”

PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER THAT DOES NOT COME NOISE

“Lotta bones in a skeleton.”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Dr. Fauci, all I hear from you is bad news. The American people, who are all just aces in my book, are getting tired of your attitude. You’re a bring-down, man. You’re, like, a mope.”

“Senator, I try to convey the facts as we know them in a clear and concise manner. The news right now is not good. Y’know how people say ‘I got good news and I got bad news?’ Well, the only way our pandemic response could be the good news is if the other news was the Holocaust. Or the Siege of Stalingrad. Something like that.”

“There you go. That’s the attitude I was talking about. Last week, President Trump was asked whether he was concerned about Covid spreading at his rallies? And he said ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ See how optimistic that sounds?”

“I would not classify that remark as ‘optimistic’.”

“Where’s my baseball, Fauci? Why’d you kill baseball, you sonofabitch?”

“I did not ‘kill’ baseball, Senator. All decisions about this year’s season have been made by the league, and I only consulted–”

“I WANT MY BASEBALL BACK! Only thing I look forward to anymore, man. I don’t have to talk to my wife for months. I fucking love baseball. Gimme back my baseball.”

“Senator–”

“I’ll suck your dick.”

“Senator–”

“I’ll work your buttonhole while I throat you. I know what I’m doing, man. Just gimme my baseball back.”

“Chair, is that five minutes?”

“Even it isn’t, let’s say it was. Who’s up for a recess?”

GAVEL NOISE!

Even Pandemics Don’t Stop The Late-Night Calls To Maggie Haberman

CELL PHONE NOISE

“Jesus, what time is it? Oh, right. The middle of the night. When these calls always come. Hello?”

“Maggie, it’s Tony Fauci.”

“Hi, Dr. Fauci.”

“How are you feeling? I see your weight is down three pounds from our last conversation. Wonderful. Are you exercising? How’s the knee?”

“All good here. How are you?”

“Little tired. Maggie, I’ll be honest with you: I have not slept since February. I think I leaned against a wall and nodded off for a moment in mid-March, but I’m making the Cannonball Run through this pandemic.”

“Dr. Fauci, you have to take care of yourself.”

“I have a country to heal.”

“True. How would you characterize our efforts so far?”

“Early in my career, I did a residency at what we would now call a group home for those with severe mobility issues, and at the time referred to as the Spaz Shack. That was the place’s official name. Much crueler time, Maggie.”

“Yes, it was.”

“And for some reason known only to the contractor and God, the place had stairs. Now, the whole point of a spaz is that he can’t walk stairs! But they would try. Sweet Funky Winkerbean, would the spazzes try to walk the stairs. And they’d come tumbling down. This was nine or ten times a day. Sometimes they’d make it halfway, and look so proud of themselves, and then it was another spazalanche. It was demoralizing to everyone involved.”

“Sounds it.”

“So…that. That’s how I would characterize the United States’ efforts in fighting the coronavirus.”

“That’s not an endorsement.”

“It is not. Our pandemic response has endemic flaws.”

“Such as?”

“Maggie, as a man of science I usually couch my statements with qualifiers. Not this time: literally everything. We have done literally everything wrong. At every junction, we have asked ourselves the question ‘What would a smart country do?’ and then done exactly the opposite. Prevention, testing, logistics, communication. You wanna know how things are going? I’m sharing an office with the MyPillow guy.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“They moved him in a couple days ago. He stole my prescription pad.”

“Not great.”

“And on Tuesday, I have a call scheduled with Dr. Phil. The President is enamored with him, and no one can get it through to the President that Dr. Phil is not a medical doctor. So now I have to talk to him, and I have been briefed that Dr. Phil is going to try to sell me emus.”

“What now?”

“Emus. He raises them or something, and apparently he ties to sell ’em to everyone he talks to. So that’s gonna be my Tuesday. A thousand people are gonna die in New York on Tuesday, and I’m gonna be chatting with Texas Oprah.”

“That doesn’t seem like an efficient use of your time.”

“On Wednesday, I speak to Gene Simmons.”

“From KISS?”

“The President calls him Dr. Love. Everyone told him it was just a song. He doesn’t care. Gene has heard about an Israeli drug named Phlegmaquil which could be a viable treatment for the coronavirus. I looked into it. Turns out Phlegmaquil is made from rabbit juice and expired Frosted Flakes. I reported this to the President. He didn’t care.”

“President Trump loves his unproven treatments.”

“Yes. His new favorite is Dilantin.”

“Dilantin? Isn’t that an out-of-date epilepsy drug that makes your teeth fall out?”

“Among other side effects. Wickedly toxic medication. It’s a last-resort drug. You’d rather use anything else.”

“Does it even have any effect on corona?”

“Who the hell knows? Chemo might kill corona, too. Some treatments are not indicated for all ailments. We’re doctors. We’re not allowed to ‘just see what happens if I do this to the patient.’ But now he’s got it in his head.”

“Who put it there?”

“Jared or some guy on Twitter semi-openly calling for my assassination. Either one.”

“Yeah, I saw you need security now because of the conspiracy theorists and whackadoodles.”

“Life is a carnival.”

“You’re hanging in there during the press conferences, though.”

“Not easy. Maggie, that is not easy. First off, the President does wear a lot of cologne.”

“He loves his Drakkar Noir.”

“The man picked a scent in 1987 and stuck with it. And when you’re up close to him, there are all these noises and sounds that you can’t hear over the teevee. Rumblings and sub-vocalizations and quite a bit of intestinal burbling. Loud breather, too. Like a rhino trying to breathe through a snorkel. President Trump takes an effortful breath.”

“It’s an audio bonanza.”

“And then, of course, he starts speaking. And that’s rough. I won’t lie: the worst parts are when he’s talking. I’ve served under six presidents, and two of them were morons. Reagan and the second Bush. Utterly clueless. But not like this guy. Reagan and Dubya were at least embarrassed of being tinybrained. They tried to hide it. Not this guy.”

“He has overruled you on several points.”

“The masks, yes. I would recommend that all Americans wear masks over their mouths and noses when they leave the house. The President disagreed, because he didn’t want to meet the Queen of England looking like that. So we told him, There’s a pandemic, sir. You’re not meeting the Queen of England for quite a while. And he blew a raspberry and went back to scrolling through Twitter.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“And then Mike Pence says Sir, maybe your bold decisions could be brought to bear on this mask question. So Trump explodes. Starts screaming. You wanna wear a mask, Mikey? Little Mikey wanna mask? and he made Pence wear a wastepaper basket on his head the rest of the meeting. Pence was crying. It was no way to run a task force.”

“I think you used the word ‘demoralizing’ before.”

“It applies here, too. Very depressing to be surrounded by so much buffoonery at such a serious moment.”

“Well, hang in there. The country needs you.”

“I need a nap. Or an enormous bowel movement. Either one would refresh my spirit right now.”

“Keep the faith, Doc.”

“Wash your hands after you hang up.”

“Yes, sir.”

DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT