In a move that should shock absolutely no one, the COVID lockdown era’s most nefarious actors are now attempting to Jedi-mind-trick their way out of taking responsibility for their actions.

Mountains of evidence have emerged that show that lockdowns, masking, and school closures did little to nothing to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and our government overlords have decided that lying is preferable to admitting to their mistakes.

Randi Weingarten , the head of the powerful union and Democratic Party slush fund American Federation of Teachers, lied to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last week, claiming she was in favor of reopening schools in early 2020. In reality, the AFT did everything in its power to prevent schools from reopening.

Any plan to reopen schools came with ridiculous demands of additional funding and suspension of teacher evaluations, among other items on its lefty wish list. The AFT’s Los Angeles affiliate went so far as to demand "Medicare for all" and a ban on charter schools in return for teachers doing their jobs.

The face of the largest expansion of government power at least since the New Deal, Dr. Anthony Fauci, would like you to believe he bears no blame whatsoever for the death and destruction caused by lockdowns. He told the New York Times, “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public health recommendation that echoed the CDC’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that.” Fauci knows this is nonsense; corporate media and the Democrats turned him into a celebrity, and authoritarian-minded governors coast to coast hung on his every word.

President Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here”; therefore, the man occupying the Oval Office deserves his fair share of the blame as well. Former President Donald Trump happily handed over control of the government to Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx but is now blatantly lying to his supporters.

A main focus of Trump’s obsession with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in recent months has consisted of the former president making up history out of whole cloth , painting DeSantis as pro-lockdown even though DeSantis was one of the few governors to reopen his state almost immediately. At the time, Trump criticized both DeSantis and Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) for reopening their state economies. Trump is not the type to apologize, but you would have hoped he had had enough respect for his tens of millions of supporters not to lie directly to their faces .

It could be viewed as a net positive that the COVID tyrants have abandoned their wicked positions from 2020 to 2021, but if they aren’t held accountable by the press (or by primary voters in Trump’s case), we are setting ourselves up for more authoritarianism in the future. Some leftists are already salivating at the idea.

Brady Leonard ( @bradyleonard ) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast .