People are reacting to recent reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci resisted a Trump-era order to cancel the controversial research grant from the National Institutes of Health to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to the reports, the White House sent a directive for the NIH nonprofit grant worth a remaining $370,000 to EcoHealth Alliance to be canceled. EcoHealth Alliance was nonprofit conducting research on COVID-19 and frequently worked with Wuhan lab experts. Fauci admits that he “reluctantly agreed” after learning that former President Donald Trump was behind the order.
In his book, “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta talked about Fauci’s response to the directive. In June last year, Fauci said the grant was canceled but that he didn’t know the reason behind the order.
Rep. Buddy Carter said that Dr. Fauci has “once again been caught lying” while trying to maintain his own relevance and downplay Trump’s role in combatting the crisis. He said that they need somebody leading the pandemic response who is more concerned with the truth than their own PR campaign. “It’s time for Dr. Fauci to go,” Rep. Carter said.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise agreed that there are too many unanswered questions in Congress and points out how “perplexing” it is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to allow any formal investigation into the origins of COVID-19. He argues that they can’t get the American people the answers they deserve without a “real complete and transparent investigation.”
Other lawmakers point out the discrepancies between Fauci’s hearing comments and the book, adding that it is “very concerning” and just goes to show the importance of having a full investigation. Over 200 House GOP Members have called on Speaker Pelosi to direct committee chairs on investigating claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology leaked the coronavirus pandemic. Many lawmakers have also alleged that Fauci knew the Wuhan lab was conducting gain-of-function research when he funded them.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn is the most recent lawmaker calling on Dr. Fauci to step down with the investigation and let the American people figure this out. She claims that Dr. Fauci should be fired for how he handled the pandemic behind the scenes, specifically his cozy relationship with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg thanked Fauci in one of the emails for his “leadership” skills and Facebook’s rollout of the coronavirus information hub. He said that it would be useful to include a video of Fauci since people want to hear “from the experts” and someone they trust rather than a bunch of agencies and political leaders. Mind you, when people question or assert attacks on Dr. Fauci, he says you are attacking science itself. But over the last year, we’ve seen that Dr. Fauci doesn’t even have his basic science class skills down – You need evidence to support a claim.
“What we also know is Dr. Fauci was running a PR campaign. He was not giving the American people accurate scientific information. He was cherry-picking different facts to help him in a PR campaign. So maybe he should leave his post and go work for an ad agency to try to do PR campaigns,” Blackburn said.
Even though most Republicans want Dr. Fauci to step down after a year of virtue signaling and changing his story, Democrats will probably award him with a Nobel Prize or another book deal worth $5.1 million dollars like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That’s the Dem way.
