Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) posted a video smearing Dr. Anthony Fauci and tech companies with coronavirus disinformation, and she was fact-checked and criticized.
The Tennessee Republican baselessly claimed China had engineered the deadly pandemic with Fauci's help, and she misleadingly claimed the infectious disease expert had consulted with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg about tricking the public to take health precautions.
"Dr. Fauci was emailing with Mark Zuckerberg trying to create that narrative, cherry picking information so that you would only know what they wanted to know -- what they wanted you to know, and there would be a narrative that fit with this cherry-picked information," Blackburn said. "The second thing [to] be aware of, it was Dr. Fauci and his agency that wrote that check, sent that money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to do this coronavirus research.
Her bizarre claims were not well received.
How is this person a *United States Senator*?? Why don\u2019t we talk more about the fact that only one party has people like Marsha Blackburn & Ron Johnson representing it in the Senate and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene & Mo Brooks in the House? How has dumbness overrun the GOP?https://twitter.com/marshablackburn/status/1402269641255407620\u00a0\u2026— Mehdi Hasan (@Mehdi Hasan) 1623162702
It allmost seems like she and Trump are working on inciting their mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging \u201cpatriots\u201d to target Fauci & Zuckerberg\u2026but I must be mistaken, they would never.— Ghost of Nobody\u2019s Shadow (@Ghost of Nobody\u2019s Shadow) 1623173155
Would you take medical advice from this person? Or really any advice at all? Jeez, the whole idea of being stupid on purpose might be the most defining moment of current history.https://twitter.com/marshablackburn/status/1402269641255407620\u00a0\u2026— Brad Gilbert (@Brad Gilbert) 1623174246
600k people of both parties cannot refute or retweet this.— Michael Thomas (@Michael Thomas) 1623163289
What about investigating how the Trump administration downplayed the early days of the virus which led to more than half a million Americans needlessly dying?\n\nWhy don't you investigate that as well?— G. "Clay" Mitchell (@G. "Clay" Mitchell) 1623162825
Could be worse. Look who I get...pic.twitter.com/TZAbuAY0j1— Dan Vaughn (@Dan Vaughn) 1623163510
I don\u2019t think it was a secret big tech was trying to keep since they were literally discussing making videos that would feature fauci and would appear on their platform.\n\nAnd I\u2019d double check whether fauci signed that check to the Wuhan lab, Marsha.— Dana Weiss (Taylor's Version) (@Dana Weiss (Taylor's Version)) 1623173298
This person is an idiot. There is nothing sane about this ridiculous display of stupidity.https://twitter.com/marshablackburn/status/1402269641255407620\u00a0\u2026— Fred Wellman (@Fred Wellman) 1623162926
I love that these Republican senators are now attacking Facebook which spread the disinformation that helped to bring a lot of them to power.https://twitter.com/marshablackburn/status/1402269641255407620\u00a0\u2026— Molly Jong-Fast (@Molly Jong-Fast) 1623172248
"Cherry-picking information." That's rich. Now talk about Trump on the Woodward tapes. Knew it was 5x deadlier than severe flu, but lied to the nation about it for months.— DynastyArchives\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@DynastyArchives\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1623163479
