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Conservative hostility toward the science advocacy of Greta Thunberg and Anthony Fauci has hampered efforts to tackle the crises of climate change and COVID-19. However, the discursive processes that establish and mobilize links between partisan identity and attitudes toward science communication remain poorly understood. This research utilized political discourse analysis on 400 articles from conservative media, 200 of which referenced Thunberg in the title, and 200 of which addressed Fauci. The analysis of these "least similar cases" revealed that conservative media portrayed Fauci and Thunberg as agents of the political left, using science as a tool to dominate the right in a populist, binary struggle over which group should embody American identity. In both instances, conservative media leveraged aspects of conservative identity to morally justify rejecting the messaging of Thunberg and Fauci. While most conservative content avoided direct engagement with the science advocated by Thunberg and Fauci, a subset that did represented conservative identity as respectful of scientific expertise. I describe a discursive method of justifying the rejection of the work of experts while avowing respect for science as an "epistemology of moral discernment," in which conservatives present the moral character of a science communicator as a criterion for assessing claims of truth. I conclude that "selective science hostility discourse" is best understood as a strategy for morally legitimizing politically motivated rejection of the truth claims and policy recommendations of science communicators.