It’s routinely amazing that the Left will speak so shamelessly about how some Trump initiative or another displays authoritarian tendencies. Rachel Maddow endlessly discusses what she calls “an authoritarian takeover of our country and the destruction of our Constitution.” But we have a very recent example of authoritarianism descending on America, controlling our private lives. It was the Covid pandemic. At its outbreak, the coronavirus seemed especially deadly, and the vast majority of Americans consented to all of the mandates, the closing of our schools and our churches, the shaming of anyone gathering in a private home for a birthday or for Christmas. When the vaccines became available, many of us took them when we could. Our lives were subject to dictates by the mandarins of infectious disease. The most prominent of these was Dr. Anthony Fauci, and he remains to this day a sainted figure among our media elites. Leftists put Fauci’s face on devotional candles like he was a saint. One called him “Saint Vaccine King.” His word was supposed to be accepted as “the Science.” He would not be “fact checked.” The supposedly independent website PolitiFact has only one check on Dr. Fauci in almost twenty years of existence, from October 2021, rating him “Mostly True” for claiming “precious few religions” object to vaccines.   As time goes on, anyone can see the media will not accept any questioning of Fauci’s actions. The latest potential “news hook” was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard releasing a trove of files on June 19 detailing how Fauci worked with intelligence officials to crush the theory that the coronavirus emerged from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The networks avoided this story like the plague. The New York Times and The Washington Post also ignored it – which was especially weird as The Post published an enormous front-page investigative piece alleging Gabbard was long under the spell of a cult leader. CNN’s Trump-trashing fact checker Daniel Dale rushed to Fauci's defense, under the headline “Why the Covid-19 documents Gabbard released don’t prove her claims about Fauci.” Dale injected skepticism into nearly everything in this document release. He claimed no one can say Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 because Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) wasn't precise enough with his questions. This is the closest Dale came to admitting anything: “In fairness to Fauci critics, the documents do suggest Fauci wasn’t telling the full story of the CIA meeting with his next comment in the exchange,” where it’s depicted as a CIA “briefing” for Fauci, when in fact Fauci “expressed various opinions to the CIA in addition to receiving information.” In May, CNN host Jake Tapper briefly entertained Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s objections to Fauci and the lab-leak theory, but like Dale, he found facts entirely elusive: “It seems like there's still lots of opinions but no definitive proof one way or the other.” Republican Sen. Rand Paul held a hearing on Fauci and Covid that was (typically) skipped by all the “news” networks – and The New York Times and The Washington Post. This is where journalists are frustrating. They won’t seek answers to the questions Republicans are asking. Instead, they attack Republican questioners and say they have “no evidence,” even as reporters demonstrate they have no curiosity of their own in the answers. Once the elitist media have established a narrative, they suppress all attempts to re-examine their reigning narrative. The “Saint Vaccine King” candles keep burning hot, and journalists will not engage in new investigations into Fauci’s rule during the temporary authoritarianism of a scientific elite.