On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” former NIAID Director and former White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to claims that he excluded then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield from a discussion on coronavirus origins by stating that he didn’t have anything to do with who was on the call. He also responded to a question on whether Redfield should have been included by stating that “it would have been okay to have him on the call, of course.”
Fauci said, “He is totally and unequivocally incorrect in what he’s saying that I excluded him. I had nothing to do with who would be on that call. That call was organized by a group of evolutionary virologists in order to discuss the possibility that this might actually be a virus that was actually engineered. So, I didn’t put anybody on the list of that call, nor did I take anybody out. … The evolutionary virologists, Dr. Eddie Holmes, Kristian Andersen, all of the others that were on, they made the decision who was on the call. I didn’t add anybody to the call, nor did I extract anybody from the call.”
Host Neil Cavuto then asked, “You didn’t know going into the call that the CDC Director would not be part of that call. Do you think he should have been?”
Fauci answered, “Retrospectively, it would have been okay to have him on the call, of course. But I didn’t put him or take him off. And it’s really disturbing that in a public hearing of a congressional hearing, he makes an accusatory statement that has no basis whatsoever in reality. But another point, Neil, that’s important, he said, in his own mind, that he was kept out because he was of the opinion that this might be a lab leak. Half the people on the call were of the opinion that it might be a lab leak. So, his rationale of why he thought he was excluded is an invalid rationale.”
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