During a Thursday interview with The Daily Signal Sen. Rand Paul questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci. He accused Fauci of telling Americans to blindly follow him on the coronavirus epidemic.
“There will absolutely be consequences for the people who are flouting the law” when Republicans take back Congress, the Kentucky Republican promised.
“But really, Fauci needs to be gone,” Paul said of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “When we have the power to remove him, we will. I don’t know if that’s going to come before Biden leaves office, but we’ll see what can happen with a unified Congress. It’s not so easy without the presidency.”
>>>Listen to the full interview with Sen. Rand Paul on “The Daily Signal Podcast”:
Paul addressed Fauci’s Sunday suggestion on “CBS This Morning” that Republicans—and former President Donald Trump —have a “misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety.”
Fauci’s comments reflect a “casual disregard for what this country was founded upon,” Paul told The Daily Signal, “that our rights come from our creator, that they’re guaranteed and enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
Fauci has a “casual disregard” for not only American liberties but also for science, Paul said, criticizing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his response to accusationsThe National Institute of Health paid for gain-of-function research at a Wuhan lab.
“He just wants you to listen to his authority,” the Kentucky senator told The Daily Signal. “He has the authority. He wants people to listen and not question him, but that’s sort of a recipe for authoritarianism, so I greatly object to him.”
Paul stated that it would be best to seperate Fauci and the government as soon possible. The Daily Signal was informed by the senator that no Democrat has requested any hearings on Fauci and that no Democrats are interested to investigate the origins the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve been trying for six months now in the two main committees I’m on, the Health Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, to get a hearing, an investigative hearing on the origins of the virus,” Paul said. “I can get nothing. The Democrats completely are stonewalling us.”
On Monday, President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping without discussing the origins of the coronavirus—and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said ThursdayBiden chose not to broach the topic, as the Chinese president already knows that Biden wants answers.
“They see us as weak,” Paul told The Daily Signal. “We are a country stumbling. We’re a country that has an incompetent at the head who can’t remember his lines, has his lines written for him, is confused and addled on many days.”
“I think they see that as a country that selected a weak leader, and I think they’ll try to continue to take advantage of us,” Paul predicted.
The Kentucky senator pointed out that Fauci, who works for Biden, believes that China should be trusted, claims that the research funded at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was not related to gain-of-function research, and thinks the United States should still send money over to China for research in the lab.
“I think that’s a death wish,” Paul said, “and I’m not alone.”
“There are many scientists now writing about this who are not partisans, who are not political at all,” he continued, referring to gain-of-function research, a process in which researchers may stitch viruses together to make a lab-made “chimeric” virus for the purpose of studying a response.
“In fact, many of them are liberal Democrats saying that this kind of research could threaten civilization,” Paul said. “If they create a virus that has like a 50% mortality (and some of the experiments are with viruses with 50% mortality) we could wipe out a large portion of the civilized world. It could be devastating.”
The senator asked listeners to think about the catastrophic loss of civilization that would result from a virus that wipes off such a large percentage of the population.
If you eliminate 50% of the population, think of all the people who are needed with the brains to be leaders in every generation. It’s often the way people think of war. You think about World War I and the millions of young people who died. But, although they were mostly men, their ideas could have helped humanity. Imagine what happens to a virus that kills half of the population.
Fauci shows no concern about this, Paul said, “pushing hard to cover his tracks and make sure he doesn’t get any of the blame.”
The senator suggested that to his Democratic colleagues, misbehavior from leading Biden administration figures like Attorney General Merrick Garland and Fauci is “largely a partisan game.”
“They hated everything about Trump and they were eager to be critical, but they are unwilling to be reflective when it’s their own president,” Paul said. “And realize the conundrum we have. I’ve referred Fauci for a criminal investigation, but I had to refer him to Merrick Garland.”
“So I’m referring to a guy that now is publicly attacking parents and going after investigating parents for their opinion,” he said, referring to Garland, who appears to have misled Congress about the FBI using counter intelligence toolsTo inquire about parents.
“We’re expecting him to honestly investigate Fauci? No, it’s not going to happen, but it’s going to come in 2022,” Paul said.
The senator told The Daily Signal that he sees a “wave of discontent rising in the country” growing larger every day. Should Republicans take back Congress, Paul would like to see an investigation into Fauci’s conduct.
“I’ll lead at least one committee, and we will use subpoena power to bring him in,” he said. “We’ll use subpoena power to bring in his documents and we will get to the bottom of this. We will determine the source of the virus. We will subpoena all the information.”
Paul also promised to examine whether there was “a cover-up” between Fauci and Peter Daszak, the head of the EcoHealth Alliance research organization found to have conductedGain of function research on coronaviruses prior to 2019 in the Wuhan Lab
Daszak was the only American member of a World Health Organization investigation that concluded, in early 2021 after an investigation in China, that it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
He was also behind a February 2020 letter that condemned “conspiracy theories” suggesting the coronavirus did not originate naturally, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. He would admit later onHis statement was meant to shield Chinese scientists from criticism.
“That will all be investigated, but we will get to the bottom of this,” Paul said.
“We will also get to the bottom of gain-of-function research, whether or not you should be creating viruses that don’t exist in nature that could ultimately threaten our civilization,” Paul added. “We’re going to get to the bottom of whether we should continue that kind of research and whether the government should fund it.”
