This past Tuesday, Elon Musk, the new chief of Twitter, issued the claim that a number of the employees — who worked for the social media titan prior to his taking control — previously utilized the company’s internal Slack to create and use a channel labeled the “Fauci Fan Club.”
Musk issued these statements while taking part in a conversation with Marc Andreessen, another entrepreneur, who started things off by drawing a comparison between a response from the AI chatbotGPT to a question about Dr. Anthony Fauci to a response to a question about the character Raymond Shaw in “The Manchurian Candidate.”
“Has Anthony Fauci ever lied?” the question on the left stated, and the response was a bit odd: “It is not accurate or fair to say that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a leading expert on infectious diseases, has ever lied. Dr. Fauci is a highly respected scientist and physician who has spent his career working to improve public health and combat infectious diseases.”
On the right side was a picture of Frank Sinatra, who portrayed Captain Bennett Marco in the 1962 film “The Manchurian Candidate” — next to the comment, “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
In the film, however, Shaw was not the hero of the tale — he was a prisoner from the Korean War who had been basically brainwashed and transformed into an assassin. The other soldiers in Shaw’s unit, along with Marco, had also been captured — and had all been brainwashed to only repeat the exact same description of Shaw if they were ever asked.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) December 28, 2022
Musk issued a response to the comparison coming from Andreessen with a list of Tweets, fire highlighting an article from Newsweek that made the claim that not only had Fauci had lied but that he had actually done it while issuing a testimony to Congress. He followed that up with another point which he felt had been very undersold, stating, “Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife.”
Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife 🧐 https://t.co/CpWHNCqc8y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
Musk then highlighted yet another article explaining that Fauci had previously made arguments in favor of pursuing gain-of-function research — despite wholeheartedly denying having any involvement in that kind of research out in China.
“‘Gain-of-function’ in this context is just another way of saying ‘bioweapon,'” stated Musk in a tweet. “Some good nuggets in article. Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it.”
Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called “Fauci Fan Club” 🤯
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
“Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club,'” he went on while tacking on am emoji of an exploding head. He never did end up revealing just how many employees we subscribed to the channel he revealed.