On Thursday’s edition of Peacock’s “Mehdi Hasan Show,” former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that he has always had an open mind on the origins of COVID-19 and that his previous comments referring to the lab leak theory as a “shiny object” were about people saying the lab leak was definitely true without evidence.

Fauci said, “I think if you go back, Mehdi, it wasn’t a dismissal. It was my opinion of what I felt was the most likely cause of the outbreak. I had always had an open mind, always have. I didn’t articulate, by the way, I have an open mind. I just was very open –.”

Host Mehdi Hasan cut in to say, “You went on Newt Gingrich’s podcast and said these are ‘conspiracy theories’ and you said, in private, to Francis Collins, this is a ‘shiny object’ — referring to the lab leak — ‘that will go away’ in time.”

Fauci countered, “Well, no, of course, again, you’ve got to put it into context. … [I]t’s really in the context. If you look at someone who immediately says, it’s a lab leak, without any data, it’s a lab leak, as opposed to looking at the context of, going back, the original SARS clearly turned out to be from a bat, to an intermediate host, to a human. MERS, bat, intermediate host, to a human.”

Hasan cut in to point out that Fauci referred to the other side of the origins debate as a conspiracy theory.

Fauci responded, “But when people make an absolute statement with no evidence whatsoever, I have to question why are you making that statement. You can say it’s a possibility that it’s that, but if you come and say, no, it’s this, with no data. That’s the context that gets confused. What I was saying early on was that, if you look at the information that you have experienced evolutionary virologists who have no skin in the game…they honestly say that it isn’t definitive. And that’s the reason why we keep an open mind. Once you get definitive proof, I and all of my colleagues, I assure you, will embrace that.”

Fauci added that he “should have been more explicit” about the fact that he had an open mind.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett