Thursday’s CNN This Morning was forced to cover the aftermath of Dr. Anthony Fauci pleading the Fifth Amendment in a Senate hearing focused on Fauci’s actions during the pandemic and diaries released by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). But the network continued to minimize the diaries and the hearing overall, as Democratic CNN commentator Maria Cardona called it a politicized “sham” and fill-in host Erica Hill called the diaries “a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages.”
Hill first started the segment near the end of the show with a brief defense of Fauci’s use of the Fifth Amendment, because he feared Paul “wants to see him behind bars.”
Cardona jumped in with her own defense of Fauci and said she was not a lawyer, but she agreed with the decision because, “Republicans wanted to catch him in a lie, wanted to catch him - twist his words and hold him in contempt, you know, get him for lying to Congress.”
She then said, “they’re so obsessed with going after him.”
Thursday’s CNN This Morning was forced to cover the aftermath of Dr. Fauci pleading the Fifth, but minimized it.
After panelist Terry Schilling tore into Fauci over COVID and his diaries, Maria Cardona responded: “A Diary is a diary, okay?”
Fill-in host Erica Hill also jumped in… pic.twitter.com/KSOE6cgzpn— Nick (@nspin310) July 30, 2026
Cardona continued and labeled the hearing as a politicized sham while she praised Dr. Fauci:
And Dr. Fauci right now has a much better approval rating than anyone at HHS right now. And so many people in - when I posted about this, they were like, thank you, Dr. Fauci. Because of you, I'm alive. He saved the lives of millions of Americans.
(...)
So, this is all a sham by Republicans who, again, have nothing to talk about when it comes to the economy and just want to distract.
Panelist Terry Schilling, President of American Principles Project and a member of the Media Research Center’s board of directors, tore into Fauci after he heard Cardona’s praise:
He can't even answer why. He can't even answer why so many of our loved ones had to die alone in hospitals. They can't answer why our young kids had to go outside of schools, had learning loss, had serious mental crises happen to them. This is pathetic.
Schilling then noted, “And if anyone's politicizing this, it's not Republicans who are seeking justice. It's the Democrats who failed to even account or acknowledge the fact that our kids and our families were hurt so badly by his actions while he was lying. “
After he called the diary “so incriminating and an indictment of him,” Cardona interjected by huffing, “The diary is a diary, okay?”
Schilling pushed back, “The diary is him admitting that he cares more about Kim Kardashian.”
Hill interrupted the back and forth and gave her own form of minimization and called it, “a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages of I think - anybody in there who wants to find something that they don't like about Dr. Fauci, they can find something in there.”
Schilling tried to get back into the conversation and stated, “But he was caught lying,” before Hill instead turned to NPR’s Tamara Keith to discuss the long-term polarization of COVID.
It was not as much of a “choose-your-own-adventure” as Hill suggested, as the diary release was full of comments of Fauci loving his newfound celebrity status while he also said things in private that completely contradicted what he said in public. Moreover, even if they did want to “catch him in a lie,” the truth would be that Fauci lied.
Even after the hearing, the liberal media, as seen on CNN, seemed to not want to lose their love for Fauci, at least not yet.
The transcript is below. Click "expand":
CNN This Morning
July 30, 2026
6:51:05 AM Eastern
(...)
ERICA HILL: Senator Rand Paul, Fauci's longtime foe who subpoenaed him to testify under oath, is now threatening to hold the doctor in contempt. Republicans still want answers about the doctor's personal diaries, which Rand Paul put out publicly, and also past testimonies to Congress.
The group chat is back. So, over 100 times, he did say in his opening statement that he felt, and I'm paraphrasing here, right, that he was there because, as Senator Paul has said, he wants to see him behind bars. So, there were questions about what he would and wouldn't say.
(...)
6:52:15 AM Eastern
MARIA CARDONA: But I heard other lawyers say that if Fauci was their client, they would absolutely have advised the same exact thing
HILL: Yes.
CARDONA: Because the pardon is for stuff, apparently, that you have done. They're not sure whether it will count for things moving forward. And so what the danger was, is that Republicans wanted to catch him in a lie, wanted to catch him - twist his words and hold him in contempt, you know, get him for lying to Congress.
And because they're so obsessed with going after him, I think, you know, and again, I'm not a lawyer, but I talked to a lot of them yesterday and the vast majority of them said this is the safest place for him to be.
And I think what it did to the American people is it showed what a sham this congressional hearing was, because I agree that there are things to talk about, but because Republicans have politicized this so much, there was no way that they were going to be able to get to the things that we wanted to know.
And Dr. Fauci right now has a much better approval rating than anyone at HHS right now. And so many people in - when I posted about this, they were like, thank you, Dr. Fauci. Because of you, I'm alive. He saved the lives of millions of Americans. He got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or whatever the medal was that Donald Trump got him - put around his neck.
So, this is all a sham by Republicans who, again, have nothing to talk about when it comes to the economy and just want to distract.
TERRY SCHILLING: I just got to say, he's already been caught in several lies. His diary was leaked. This guy is - he has nothing to protect himself from being incriminated against. He was pardoned.
He can't even answer why. He can't even answer why so many of our loved ones had to die alone in hospitals. They can't answer why our young kids had to go outside of schools, had learning loss, had serious mental crises happen to them. This is pathetic.
And if anyone's politicizing this, it's not Republicans who are seeking justice. It's the Democrats who failed to even account or acknowledge the fact that our kids and our families were hurt so badly by his actions while he was lying. The diary is so incriminating and an indictment of him and anyone that doesn't speak up against -
CARDONA: The diary is a diary, okay?
SCHILLING: The diary is him admitting that he cares more about Kim Kardashian.
CARDONA: That is way political -
HILL: The diary is a - I called it this yesterday, and I stand by it: the diary is a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages of I think - anybody in there who wants to find something that they don't like about Dr. Fauci, they can find something in there.
SCHILLING: But he was caught lying -
HILL: [To Tamara Keith] What's fascinating in this moment is the fact that there is still six years later, right? This is still so passionate for so many people. What does that say about where we stand and what the priorities are in Congress?
TAMARA KEITH: Yeah, I mean, I think that COVID was this massive rupture for the American people. I mean, globally, it was a terrible event that extended for a long period of time, changed people's lives, and really drew out the political divisions that definitely already existed in this country.
But the polarization has very much been applied to COVID and that experience that I'm pretty sure everyone can agree was terrible. But other than that, there's not a lot of agreement on how long people should have had social distancing, whether there should have been masks, whether the vaccine is going to kill you or save your life.
Like, there's just so much polarization about this, but this is the this is an event, a global event that people will be talking about, that we will be talking about when we're 100 years old, and people will still be fighting about it.
(...)
