Outgoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Republicans who “politicizing” him were “ridiculous.”
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Since you’re retiring, do you think that will change what looked to be a really intense political firestorm aimed at you? There have been all these House Republican calls for investigations into the origins of COVID and saying they’re gonna bring you up to Capitol Hill. Do you think that wanes as you step down?
FAUCI: Well, I don’t think it’s gonna wane for me because they’re already saying, the Republicans, that had they won the Senate, they would be bringing me before the committee that Rand Paul would be- likely would be chairing. That’s not going to happen because the Senate is not in the Republican control. But the Republican House has said that they’re going to- and that’s fine with me.
BRENNAN: You’ll appear?
FAUCI: Oh, of course. I mean, I’m very much in favor of- of legitimate oversight. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve testified before Congress, given the 38 years that I’ve been director, literally hundreds of times, in many oversight hearings.
BRENNAN: It’s never been this personal for you, though. And I know when I talked to you a year ago, you were angry. You said I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying.
FAUCI: Well, you know, it is- it- they’ve clearly politicized it. You know they say that- I’m not political at all, period. I’ve never been and anybody who knows anything about me knows that that’s the case. But it is very clear when people are running their campaigns with an anti-Fauci element to it. I mean, that’s ridiculous. I mean, this is a public health issue. So yeah, it’s going to keep going likely much more geared towards me. I mean, it’s obviously a political issue. I’m not going to get involved. I didn’t get involved before in the politics. And I’m not going to get involved now in the politics, I’d be more than happy to explain publicly or otherwise, everything that we’ve done, and I could defend and explain everything that we’ve done from a public health standpoint.
BRENNAN: Because there is the political argument. And then there is the intelligence and scientific argument, demanding some more answers about COVID.
FAUCI: Yeah.
BRENNAN: And I think you’d agree that those are some legitimate questions there.
FAUCI: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
BRENNAN: And last year, President Biden said the United States is asking China for more data about the origins.
FAUCI: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Have you seen anything that Beijing has produced?
FAUCI: No, you know, one of the- one of the problems is that- and this is historic. It goes way back to bird flu, the H5N1, the H7N9, the original SARS-CoV-1. That the Chinese, not necessarily the scientists that we know and we have dealt with and collaborated with productively for decades, but the whole establishment, a political and other establishment in China, even when there’s nothing at all to hide, they act secretive, which absolutely triggers an appropriate suspicion of like, “What the heck is going on over there?” When you had SARS-CoV-1, back in 2002, they were not transparent at all about what the heck was going on in China until–
BRENNAN: The Communist Party wasn’t?
FAUCI: Right. Until it got into Hong Kong, and then spread to the rest of the world. It has been proven without a doubt that SARS-CoV-1 went from a bat to an intermediate animal host to a human. Didn’t come out of any lab, nothing. It was a natural occurrence, yet they were so secretive about it, that you might want to suspect about what they’re hiding. So right now, what we would really like to know is all of the details of what went on with the original people who were infected. We keep a completely open mind as to what the origin is. Having said that, if you look at the examination by highly qualified international scientists with no political agendas, they’ve published in peer reviewed journals, the best of the peer reviewed journals, that all the accumulated evidence, particularly related to the Chinese bringing into the Wuhan market animals from the wild that should not have been there that clearly could have brought in from a bat to them to a human, that the evidence is quite strong that this is a natural occurrence. Does that mean we’ve ruled out that there was something funny going on at leak? Absolutely. And I, and all of my colleagues, keep an absolutely open mind, we’ve got to investigate every possibility because this is too important not to do that. That’s not incompatible with saying the scientific evidence still weighs much more strongly that this is a natural occurrence. You must keep your mind open that it’s something other than that.
BRENNAN: Right. Or that it was both at- Right.
FAUCI: Exactly.
BRENNAN: But, have you seen anything that Beijing has produced at all in terms of explanation or data?
FAUCI: Well, their explanation is an explanation that they will not allow us to look at the primary information.
BRENNAN: Still- yeah. Totally still won’t allow you to–
FAUCI: They can say, oh, you know, it’s in frozen food, or it’s in this or it’s in that. But there’s no primary data. The W.H.O. went in and saw some of the data, which some of which was actually quite helpful. But we- you know what we need, Margaret, we need a transparency and a collaboration to open things up so that we can discuss it in a non-accusatory way.
BRENNAN: Exactly.
FAUCI: What happens is that if you look at the anti-China approach, that clearly the Trump administration had right from the very beginning, and the accusatory nature, the Chinese are going to flinch back and say, Oh, I’m sorry, we’re not going to talk to you about it, which is not correct. They should be.
BRENNAN: But they’re not talking to the Biden administration about it either is what you’re saying.
FAUCI: Exactly. I think that horse is out of the barn, and they’re very suspicious of anybody trying to accuse them. We need to have an open dialogue with their scientists and our scientists, keep the politics out of it. And let the scientists- because these are scientists that we’ve known for decades, and we’ve collaborated with them.
BRENNAN: The Washington Post editorial board had an interesting piece on this recently. I don’t know if you read it–
FAUCI: Yeah. Yeah.
BRENNAN: –but about the secrecy regarding the origins. And it says the world owes those who died, 6 million people, but probably twice that or more to be better prepared in the future. The cover-up is immense and still in place. China should now agree to a full and thorough scientific investigation that returns to Wuhan. Do you agree with that word cover-up? And intentional distortion?
FAUCI: I don’t know what that means. No, I- I- it isn’t that I agree or disagree. I’m not sure what they’re talking about. I mean, if cover-up is not allowing people to come in and look at all the data, that’s not a cover, that’s not being transparent. To me a cover-up is–
BRENNAN: Well, but like the animals being killed before anyone can go into the market to investigate that.
FAUCI: No, no, no. Well- again I don’t want to- it’s going to be taken out of context by others, for sure, but that’s my life. Welcome to it. Cover up means you know something, and you’re hiding it, not being transparent and allowing things to open is a little bit of a different. The thing that I- that I’m very concerned about, is that the Chinese knew from the original SARS-CoV-1, that you don’t want to bring these exotic animals into a market placed in contact with people. So they supposedly outlawed it, then you get a very competent, high integrity investigator from Australia, goes to China and gets photographs of these animals in the Wuhan market who should not have been there. So that to me is like an example, if you want to call that a cover up, or you want to call that lack of transparency, I don’t know what it is. But when you say you’re not going to bring animals into a market, and you do, that’s bad.
BRENNAN: Yeah, and some have argued, it’s just that the way the bureaucracy of the communist state works, that it didn’t want to allow for embarrassment.
FAUCI: Exactly. It- it- I think you just maybe in two sentences explained a lot that people are spending a half an hour talking about.
BRENNAN: Well it’s absolutely fascinating be fascinating, frankly, I find it all fascinating.
FAUCI: No, no it’s fascinating that, you know, it’s the idea of they don’t want to be embarrassed. And by not wanting to be embarrassed, it’s like shooting yourself in the foot of nobody believing anything you say.
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