Rand Paul Gets The Fauci Ouchie In Combative Hearing: “If Anybody Is Lying Here, Senator, It Is You” [VIDEO]

CNBC reports:

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul traded barbs in a heated exchange at a Senate hearing Tuesday over whether the National Institutes of Health funded controversial research Paul claims could have contributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Paul grilled Fauci about an NIH funded study that he says qualifies as gain-of-function research, the process of altering a pathogen to make it more transmissible in order to better predict emerging diseases.

Fauci previously denied in previous Senate testimony that the NIH has directly funded the research at a lab in Wuhan, China that has come under intense scrutiny as a possible source of the virus.

The Insider reports:



“Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you’re talking about,” Fauci said to Paul when the Kentucky Republican suggested that the US’s top infectious disease expert had been dishonest about whether the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.

Paul effectively accused Fauci of lying to Congress about research in China on coronaviruses. “I totally resent the lie you are now propagating, senator,” Fauci went on to say to Paul. “Those viruses are molecularly impossible to result in SARS-CoV-2 … You are implying what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”