On MS NOW's On the Line with Alicia Menendez, Angelo Carusone discusses how Fauci coverage has become a rallying point to unify a fractured right-wing media
Carusone: There's a “degree of nostalgia” that “pulls everybody back together”
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From the July 29, 2026, edition of MS NOW's On The Line With Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Angelo, help us understand why they're so obsessed with Dr. Fauci.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I mean, so look, it's not oversight, right? And it's, as you noted, it's theater, it's nostalgia. That's what it is right now. It's 2020 nostalgia. And why they're able to be nostalgic about it is because he for them is one of the few unifying villains that they still have left. And keep in mind that everything that's happening right now that Trump is doing is tearing them apart. On Iran, the MAGA coalition is tearing apart. On Epstein, MAGA coalition is tearing apart.
On economy, MAGA coalition is tearing apart. So, the one thing that unifies them though is their universal hatred for Dr. Fauci and the story that they were seeped in for so long, which was somehow that his political desires overrode the science, which is also these days a qualification for working for RFK, especially as we've seen with recent reporting. And just to sort of illustrate that, Fox News, just since Monday, has spent seven and a half hours on air about this topic, seven and a half hours. Three hours covering the hearing, four and a half hours talking about it so far. That's the degree of nostalgia. It's the one thing that sort of pulls everybody back together.
Now look, it's a little bit of a sugar high. It's not going to be durable, it's not sustainable. But in this moment, what's so appealing and alluring about it is they seem like they're — that they want, they can talk about this thing that unifies them, and two, maybe this is the one thing that will work out, you know? They didn't get their election stuff to get confirmed. They didn't get the Epstein stuff and all the deep state accountability. Maybe this is the one guy that they'll get to put to jail, and that's why the larger perjury trap questions and the consistent persecution are, you know, are sort of there because they help feed the beast and keep that one little thing, the shreds still together.