Calls for Dr. Fauci’s resignation intensify after admitting to $600,000 NIH funding for Wuhan lab
Thomas McDonald
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Calls for Dr. Anthony Fauci to resign or be fired are increasing after revelations that the National Institutes of Health earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Under Dr. Fauci’s guidance, Americans have lost confidence in the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, leading to confusion and serious government overreach that has threatened Americans’ livelihoods and freedoms,” said Ohio Representative Warren Davidson, who introduced the Fauci Incompetence Requires Early Dismissal Act.
“Dr. Fauci represents everything that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address: the scientific-technical elite steering the country toward their own ends,” he added.
Republicans have blasted Fauci after telling lawmakers that the National Institutes of Health earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology over a five-year period to study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans.
Fauci’s admission comes after it was revealed earlier this month that the Obama administration funneled $1.1 million to the Wuhan lab through the EcoHealth Alliance, according to Pennsylvania Representative Guy Reschenthaler.
“I find it deeply disturbing that American taxpayers footed the bill for over $1 million to support dangerous and potentially deadly research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and military biological research,” said Reschenthaler.
“The American people deserve to know why their hard-earned tax dollars went to a foreign lab that has a history of safety concerns, engages in risky experiments, and had a possible role in the origins of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic,… It is long past time for Dr. Fauci to stop talking to the American public. Fauci should resign or be fired immediately,” Reschenthaler added.
Fauci now admits he is skeptical of the origins of COVID-19, doubting that it was natural. When asked about this topic he said “I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.”
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he added while speaking at an event over the weekend.
Fauci’s comments regarding the origin of the virus are different from what he said last May, when he assured American’s that the virus originated naturally.
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Fauci said at the time.
“Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” he added.
Chinese state media reacted to Fauci’s change in opinion, saying he is responsible for “rumors and slander” against the Chinese Communist government. “Fauci attempted to hype the old and groundless narrative that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan,” editor-in-chief Hu Xijian wrote in the Global Times on Tuesday.
“Fauci says ambiguously, but he knows he is fanning a huge lie against China. Rumors and slander against China can be seen everywhere in the US media, and politicians lie about China without any bottom line,” Hu added.
Earlier this month, Fauci got into a heated back and forth with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul after Paul questioned him over whether the NIH helped fund “gain of function” research at the Wuhan lab.
“Sen. Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect … the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute,” Fauci said at a Capitol Hill hearing on May 11.
Paul accused Fauci of being a “government scientist” who “favors gain of function research.” Fauci interrupted before Rand could finish. “You are saying things that are not correct,” Fauci said.
Since the heated exchange, Paul joined the growing list of GOP lawmakers demanding Fauci be removed, saying, “The nicest way to say this, I think he’s obfuscating the truth.”
“The people who supported funding for gain-of-function, the creation of super viruses, who supported funding for the Wuhan institute, should immediately be relieved of their responsibilities… Dr. Fauci should go,” Paul said Tuesday.