Fauci lashes out at Sen. Rand Paul during Senate hearing
Sen. Paul: Fauci has gotten it in his head that he represents all of science and critics should prepare for a takedown.
This is a rush transcript of "The Ingraham Angle" on January 11, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, I have to say, Alabama, as you know. You have a lot of fans there, by the way. A lot of Georgia and Alabama fans. They said to say hi to you. However, I will say that and I'm going to get into this later. How did you know that I was going to get into this whole thing on my 'Angle'?
HANNITY: Because you're into sports. People don't know that about you that you love sports.
INGRAHAM: I do love sports. And I'm going to get into this later in the show. But I will say, huge fan base for Hannity in the stands last night. And Alabama--
HANNITY: I was a local broadcaster in Alabama.
INGRAHAM: I know you were. Can you let me talk for a second?
HANNITY: By the way, and Georgia. Yes.
INGRAHAM: OK. Let me talk for a second. So a lot of fans, but I will also say that even though I wanted Alabama to win, there's a very positive story. I'm going to tell later on in the show.
HANNITY: Really?
INGRAHAM: For Alabama fans and Georgia fans will like what I'm about to say. OK. So anyway, I got to go. I got important stuff.
HANNITY: And you're going to save it for the end of the show. So I - I watch the whole show anyway.
INGRAHAM: Thank you, Hannity.
HANNITY: All right. Oos. Out.
INGRAHAM: All right. Great to see you. I'm Laura Ingraham. This is THE INGRAHAM ANGLE from Washington tonight.
Do as you're told. That's the implicit message we heard ringing from Capitol Hill to Georgia today. Now, the DOJ announced that they're going after so-called domestic terrorists. And of course, their real goal is to squelch free speech, intimidate political opponents, and discourage peaceful protests.
Now, the rule of thumb is this. The only people allowed to question election outcomes are Democrats. All others are suspected domestic terrorists. So do as you're told.
Now, in Atlanta, Biden did his tiresome race hustle and basically accused the U.S. Senate of being a racist institution.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Shell of its former self. Now, that bare minimum is blocked. We have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.
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INGRAHAM: Yes, that's just a little thing. Now remember, when Democrats lose influence, they don't retool their failed policies. No, no, no. They try to change the rules to make it easier to cheat in Congress or at the ballot box.
Now, this is why Biden's puppets here support ballot harvesting and even support voting rights for illegal aliens. Under their warped worldview, states need to do as they're told. That means no voter verification. No reviews or cleaning up of old voter rolls either.
And after bumbling the response to the pandemic, public health officials and their progressive protectorate, don't believe you should be able to criticize them. Even when goalposts shift or the data doesn't even support their recommendations. Just do as you're told.
Tony Fauci's appearance before the Senate today was frankly one of the most disgraceful performances by a public official I've witnessed in the 25 years I've been covering politics in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIAID: You personally attack me and with absolutely not a shred of evidence of anything you say.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Do you think it's a great success what's happened so far? You think lockdowns are good for our kids? You think we slowed down the death rate? More people have died now under President Biden than did under President Trump. You are the one responsible. You are the architect. You are the lead architect for the response from the government. And now 800,000 people have died.
FAUCI: What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue? Is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and now I have life - threats upon my life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, by this logic, no one must ever criticize the public official out of concern that third parties may react badly to the criticism, the crazies. Well, that's cute. But I for one am not surprised by Fauci's reaction at all.
He's ruled his own kingdom in the DC medical bureaucracy for decades, and has shown nothing but disdain for those who disagree with his conclusions. Not even the people's elected representatives are immune.
Here's how Fauci reacted to Senator Marshall, questioning his financial disclosures.
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FAUCI: You are totally incorrect.
SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS): Well, we have reports reviewing it.
Senator Marshall, Dr. Fauci has answered you. It is public information and he's happy to give it to you if you were to ask. Senator Moran.
FAUCI: What a moron. Jesus Christ.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Yes. You see everyone's a moron, except the guy who thought that lockdowns were the way to contain the virus. He was really smart.
And understand this, Fauci's arrogant attitude isn't just directed at Republican politicians, or TV hosts. But he also targeted practicing physicians and internationally respected medical figures. One of the Stanford doctors, who signed the Great Barrington Declaration is going to join us shortly to respond directly to Dr. Fauci.
But the main point is this. Public health officials are there to serve the public. They're accountable to the public, and are supposed to conduct themselves in ways that engender public trust. Fauci himself is the most highly compensated official in the U.S. government. I guess now more than $400,000 a year he makes.
And given his record over the past two years, given his misrepresentations on vaccines, masks, school closures, therapeutics, he should repay the taxpayers every last dime of it.
Now, in a moment, we're going to talk to Senator Rand Paul. But first, new emails and documents obtained by congressional Republicans raise serious questions about whether Fauci and other NIH officials were concealing key information about the origins of the virus and the funding of research that created it.
These emails show that not only did Fauci know that COVID may have escaped from the Wuhan lab, but he knew the virus may have been genetically engineered. And that his agency had funneled money to the lab through a third-party for similar experiments. But instead of coming clean or answering questions, he just threw another hissy fit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARSHALL: Are you saying that this was not viral gain-of-function research?
FAUCI: --know and the misinformation that the guide rails for what can be done or not were not established by me. There were established by a three- year process led by the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Joining me now is Congressman James Comer, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee that released these damning emails. Congressman, now you have a list of questions for Dr. Fauci that you posed in your letter, which one of them is the most pressing?
REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Well, the most pressing is what did he do with the information; what happened between the time of the first emails from his advisors around a dozen scientists and virologists that sent emails early on in early February of 2020. That said, it appears that this vaccine was manmade. And it appears that it leaked from the Wuhan lab.
Three days later, Dr. Fauci had a conference call with these scientists who raised these concerns. And he published a letter, all the scientists then signed on the letter saying, that any consideration that this was manmade or could have come from the Wuhan lab was just a conspiracy theory.
Now, what changed over that three-day period? And why was it Dr. Fauci transparent with the Trump administration and the public about the fact that this could have, in fact, been manmade in that lab in Wuhan?
INGRAHAM: Well, a few of the doctors, at least one of them did not sign that new rehabbed view of the virus. They went on February 1st, from - in their phone call saying, well, it looks like this thing was - it came from a lab, part of research, to publishing a - an article in Nature magazine, kind of, discounting the lab made theory.
And as you said, calling it conspiracy, I think Dr. Farzan, who's a very well-known, highly, highly respected researcher would not sign that, which I think is interesting. But you actually published in part an email from former NIH director Francis Collins to Dr. Fauci from April 16, 2020.
And the subject line read - reads, "Conspiracy Gains Momentum", referring to that lab leak hypothesis. Now, this is from Collins, "Wondering if there's something NIH can do to help put this very destructive conspiracy down with what seems to be growing momentum. I hope the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this."
Fauci then responded, "Francis, I would not do anything about this right now. It's a shiny object that will go away in time."
Well, Congressman, that was a bad bet. It didn't go away. But the most significant question you pose in your email is, did they alert anyone in the White House or HHS about this lab leak theory? And if not, all these prominent people suggested it on February 1. Why did they not?
COMER: That's the million-dollar question. Why didn't they do that? Anyone that suggested that this was manmade, or that this could have been leaked from the Wuhan lab was shot by Dr. Fauci. He was chastised by Dr. Fauci and the liberal news media.
Dr. Collins was clearly trying to spin this with the public. They were watching the press and they were concerned that Americans and Republicans, in particular, would start digging into this and find out that the probability that this was manmade, and the probability that this was leaked from that lab is very high.
INGRAHAM: Oh, and congressman, that - some of the money that we maybe gave to the EcoHealth Alliance ends up with the Wuhan lab and might have been tangled up in all this, correct? That's the other concern.
COMER: That's exactly correct. And, remember, Laura, he didn't know that for over a year that any tax dollars went to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. We now know, that's untrue. Our committee uncovered those emails as well.
And why did he lie about that? Why wasn't he transparent about that? And think about the missed opportunities in the early days for the World Health Organization, or some entity that's supposed to be the watchdog over things like this. They could have gone in if they were credible. We now know they're not credible. But someone from the United States government could have gone in and investigated this Wuhan lab.
And what we fear is the Chinese government had all this time to go in and clean their tracks. And the American people and the world for that matter may never know the true origination of COVID. But the more that we dig up, the more it looks like Dr. Fauci was trying to conceal important information.
INGRAHAM: Congressman, we appreciate it. We look forward to his answers to your letter. Thank you very much.
COMER: Thanks for having me on.
INGRAHAM: Joining me now, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who faced off once again with Dr. Fauci in the Senate today. Senator, good to see you.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Thanks for having me.
INGRAHAM: Now, the first comment I have to make after watching this. Again, I said earlier, I've never seen anything like I've seen from Fauci these past few years. But he was caught off mic, calling one of your colleagues, a moron, Senator Marshall. Your reaction to just that?
PAUL: You know, I think he's forgotten who he works for. We work for the elected people of our state, all of them. We also work for the taxpayers. But certainly he does, too. He makes $420,000 a year. And yet he think that, that somehow gives him the immunity to use his office to attack other scientists.
I think it's really dangerous that he's gotten into his head that somehow he represents all of science, that anybody criticism - criticizes him, prepare for the takedown, prepare for Fauci and others to conspire to ruin your reputation. And I think that's a terrible role model for anybody in government.
INGRAHAM: Senator, Dr. Fauci hurled an accusation directly at you. Watch.
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FAUCI: I asked myself, Why would Senator want to do this? So go to Rand Paul website, and you see, Fire Dr. Fauci, with a little box that says, contribute here. You can do $5, $10, $20, $100. So you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Senator, your reaction to that? He's had a documentary made about him, a book deal, then on magazine covers in cool Ray-Ban shades.
PAUL: Didn't he win an Emmy also?
INGRAHAM: I think so.
PAUL: But no - no, we want people to go to randpaul.com if they want to get rid of Tony Fauci. It is a political thing. He is a political creature. We think he should be put up on charges, but he's not going to until there's an intervening election. So elections do make a difference.
I think he is a menace. I think he has lied to the American public. I think that he funded the lab in Wuhan, that in all likelihood this virus came from. I think he's ignored natural immunity. I think he has told people to wear cloth masks when they don't work. I think that puts people's lives at risk.
If you're an 80-year old person, a man taking care of your wife who has COVID, you're wearing a cloth mask. You're putting yourself at risk, because Tony Fauci has been lying to you about cloth mask work. And then he goes after other scientists. So I think he's abusing his office. So yes, we go after him personally, because he attacked others personally with his office.
INGRAHAM: What is stunning here, Senator, is that apparently Dr. Fauci believes, he is beyond reproach. That he cannot be questioned. If you do question him, you might as well be one of the rioters on January 6th, or worse, a moron, like he referred to Senator Marshall. What about that fact? Just that. No accountability Fauci.
PAUL: He went one step further today. Before he was saying, he was science and you were attacking science. But now he said, if you attack him you're encouraging violence against him. Well, he said it to the wrong person.
Look, I was at the ball field when Steve Scalise was almost shot. I had a staff member 10-feet from me who was shot. I know what it's like to be shot at. I've had anthrax powder. What looked like anthrax powder delivered to my house. My wife and I have been assaulted and mobbed in the streets of DC. I had a hater of President Trump break six of our ribs, I have had part of my lung removed. I know what political violence is about.
I don't wish any violence on Fauci. I do wish he'd be fired, though, because I think trusting the Chinese is wrong. I think funding that lab in China is wrong. I think ignoring natural immunity is wrong. But I don't wish him any harm. But one thing's for sure, none of us at the ball field, not one Republican blame Bernie Sanders for that shooting.
So he's blaming me for a death threat. But when we were shot at by a Bernie Sander's supporter, not one Republican said that, Oh, this is Bernie Sander's fault. We were not juvenile enough to do that. But he came to the hearing today, and accused me of somehow inciting some loony turned person.
Does he not realize, I have people arrested once every month or two, who threaten to attack me? Plus, I have been attacked. And he's going to come and blame his attacks on me. It wasn't fair. It was a cheap shot. But it's a cheap shot by a politician, not a scientist.
INGRAHAM: And Senator, at this point, should there be any federal or state mandate for vaccines, or boosters, or masks, or any of it given now what we know about Omicron, its transmissibility, and who it can infect?
PAUL: What we found is that the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission. So there's no rule - real rule, or any kind of argument for a mandate. I haven't been for any kind of vaccine mandate. The good news is, while it is very transmissible to about 75 to 80 percent less deadly. And that's a good thing.
I think we're in the process of getting through this. Even the Biden administration is, sort of, how do we spin this to get out of this? This thing's not going away. So they're reminding us that 75 percent of the deaths have four comorbidities.
Now, when Republicans said that over the last two years, they were like, no, no, no. Trump deserves all the blame.
INGRAHAM: Yes. Well, comorbidities on top of comorbidities. Senator Paul, great to see it tonight. Thank you.
PAUL: Thank you.
INGRAHAM: And Senator Paul also hammered Fauci about his coordinated campaign with then NIH director Francis Collins to smear a prominent group of anti lockdown scientists as fringe lunatics. But Fauci offered no defense of this disgusting behavior.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: In an email exchange with Dr. Collins, you conspire. And I quote here directly from the email, "to create a quick and devastating published takedown of three prominent epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford". Do you really think it's appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to attack scientists that disagree with you?
FAUCI: The email you're referring to was an email of Dr. Collins to me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Notice this semantics game Fauci tries to play even if he didn't send the email, he didn't disavow it, or tell Collins not to smear fellow scientists. He didn't object to what Collins was saying. Instead, he sent an email with a link bolstering Collins' attack on a group of highly respected epidemiologists.
One of them joins me now, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's been in a crying room ever since he heard about this Fauci attack on the Great Barrington Declaration that he signed. Stanford Medical professor, Dr. Bhattacharya. Your reaction to Fauci's semantic game, and actually the really important issue of what he tried to do to all of you.
JAY BHATTACHARYA, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, STANFORD: Well, the thing is, he called us fringe epidemiologists. That is his boss did, and of course, Fauci didn't disavow that. Instead what Fauci did, is he engaged in a propaganda campaign to say that we wanted to let the virus rip, which was a lie. We wanted to protect vulnerable populations. It was not a fringe position.
And in fact, it's pretty close to the position that the government is now taking. So if it was so fringe then, what's - it's really hard to understand. Actually, there's more concerns that I have about this. He was the - he is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Almost every single prominent epidemiologist in infectious disease and virologist of note gets money from him.
They - if you want your career advanced, you need to be able to get grants from the NIH, the NIAID, run by Tony Fauci. A lot of the reasons why he did this was to create a false sense that there was a scientific consensus in favor of lockdowns. There was never his consensus.
INGRAHAM: Yes, so he has to--
BHATTACHARYA: And he created that.
INGRAHAM: Yes. So he created the consensus, but you have to get your ticket punched by Fauci one way or another, at least most of the doctors you're referencing have to. That is a sick revelation for THE INGRAHAM ANGLE audience. But I want to play a common refrain from President Biden of late. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: So you can protect yourself and you should protect yourself quite frankly. Get vaccinated, get boosted. There's plenty of booster shots.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Well, tonight, professor, from Bloomberg, "Repeat booster shots spur European warning on immune system risks". "Repeat booster doses every four months could eventually weaken the immune system and tire out people, according to the European Medicines Agency." Big survey and study on that. Your reaction? Are you surprised?
BHATTACHARYA: No. I mean, there's no good clinical evidence that this idea that we're going to have to take shots at one after the other after the other after the other for months on and forever. There's no evidence at all to suggest that that's the right regimen.
I mean, I do believe that the vaccines protect against severe disease and for people who are older, they're still quite wise. And I think, even for older people it might be wise to get a single booster. But I do not think that it's a good idea to push boosters as if they're the end of the - the reason or the end of the pandemic.
The end of the pandemic comes essentially when we decide that it comes. When we protect the vulnerable, as we've done, with the vaccines and the boosters and the rest of society, we let - we allow to open up, because the lockdowns have caused a tremendous harm to the psychological well being of the population, to the health of the population, the cancer treatment, diabetes management.
INGRAHAM: Yes, well, it's - we've known that for a year and a half. Yes.
Should Fauci go, Dr. Bhattacharya? Is it time for him to go?
BHATTACHARYA: I think he has done enough damage. I think he should join Francis Collins in retirement.
INGRAHAM: Dr. Bhattacharya, great to see you. Thank you.
And this is no exaggeration. Today, Joe Biden gave one of the most cynical and anti-American speeches a U.S. president has ever delivered. Dinesh D'Souza is here in moments with his response. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: A battle for the soul of America is not over. We must stand strong and stand together to make sure January 6 marks not the end democracy, but the beginning, their end game to turn the will of voters into a mere suggestion. Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things, voter suppression and election subversion.
The threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, that was a speech by the same guy who promised to restore norms, in civility to Washington bring unity to the country. And what he did? He further divided the nation over voting rights bills that don't even have the support of his own party, let alone the American people.
So what was today really all about? Joining me now is Dinesh D'Souza, conservative commentator host of the 'Dinesh D'Souza Podcast'; also with me is an old friend, Jason Nichols, progressive political analyst, senior lecturer in the African-American Studies Department at the University of Maryland. Good to see you, gentlemen.
Dinesh, what I thought about is interesting is that if democracy is truly hanging by a thread, it's a little odd that Stacey Abrams didn't show up to support the president in this endeavor. What of that?
DINESH D'SOUZA, "THE DINESH D'SOUZA PODCAST" HOST: Well, I mean, I think the strange thing about Biden here is that he is unraveling. He's laying out a scheme that will destroy constitutional democracy as we know it. But he's doing it in the - under the pretext of saving democracy.
Now, the resounding phrase he uses is his voter suppression. But there really are two kinds of voter suppression. One, of course, is if you have laws that make it difficult or impossible for people to vote, that is one form of voter suppression. But here's the other.
If you have laws that make it easy for people to cheat, that make it easy for ineligible people to vote, people who have moved out of state, people who are not old enough, or if you don't have the proper forms of checking, authentication, voter ID, if people can vote twice, then what happens? That has the effect of cancelling out other people's votes, and that is also a form of voter suppression.
So notice what the Democrats are trying to do here through their law is facilitate the second type of voter suppression in the name of preventing the first.
INGRAHAM: Now, Jason, would of that? Is voter verification of signatures and mail-in ballots, or cleaning up voter rolls, do you believe that is voter suppression? Because seems to indicate from Biden's comments that that would qualify.
JASON NICHOLS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SENIOR LECTURER: Absolutely not. But I think one of the things that the President was trying to get across when he talks about the Freedom to Vote Act, is that there are a lot of things that I think Republicans, if they understood it, or if they read it, they would agree with. Like requiring post-election audience, therefore, certain forms of voter ID, getting big money out of politics.
If I had $1 for every time on my show on Vincent Jason Save the Nation that some Republican talked about George Soros and big money, I'd be a very wealthy man. I'd have my own big money. And it's the same thing with making Election Day a holiday, which benefits all Americans. So this is about extending the role to all Americans,
INGRAHAM: Yes. But how do we ever survive
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