This week, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the soon-departing head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, if it was a “mistake” for schools to be shuttered as long as they were during the COVID pandemic. “We should realize, and have realized,” Fauci answered, “that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that,” adding that he had “nothing to do” with schools closing.

This is a transparent legacy-saving revisionism.

Fauci now portrays himself as a humble public health official who had merely shared scientific advice and information with decision-makers. This self-serving depiction conveniently ignores his fearmongering, his coaxing and lying to manipulate behavior and his partisan scheming. Governors regularly leaned on Fauci’s positions as justification for their unconstitutional shutdowns of churches, economic lockdowns and school closures. And Fauci praised them for it. Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden urged governors to “listen to Dr. Fauci” for their guidelines. Most already had. When Biden won the presidency, Fauci blamed the alleged underperformance of the United States under Donald Trump on the “disparate responses of different states versus the unified approach.” The unified approach, of course, was the Fauci approach.