Fox’s John Roberts Corrects House Republican in Real Time on False Claim that U.S. Funded Research at Wuhan Lab
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) joined John Roberts on Fox News Monday to offer his reaction to a report in The Wall Street Journal about the origins of Covid-19. According to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence document, three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China became so sick in November 2019, they needed hospitalization. China had previously told the World Health Organization that the first recorded instance of a patient with Covid-like symptoms occurred in December, and this reporting has further fueled calls for an investigation into whether the virus originated in a lab. On Monday, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said the report is “completely untrue.”
Gallagher ripped into Chinese officials, saying they’ve been “deliberately covering up” evidence that would be useful in a thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19. Then he took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“Most remarkably, we have people like Dr Fauci, who for a year has been throwing cold water on the lab leak hypothesis,” said Gallagher. “And his cronies were really denigrating anyone who was suggesting we should investigate the lab leak hypothesis now starting to say ‘Well actually, it may be more than a remarkable coincidence that China’s only level-four biosafety lab happens to be in the very place where this entire pandemic started.'”
To be clear, Fauci has never outright rejected the idea that Covid-19 originated in a lab, though he did say there’s no scientific evidence indicating the hypothesis is correct. Gallagher continued,
But the fact is that Dr. Fauci is still lying about the fact that U.S. taxpayer dollars, granted by his organization – NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] – went to something called the EcoHealth alliance run by Dr. Peter Daszak which funded dangerous gain-of-function research making naturally occurring coronaviruses more pathogenic, more infectious at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We need to follow the money to understand whether our taxpayer dollars were funding the very research that may have started this entire thing.
Roberts let Gallagher finish his response before correcting his guest.
“We should point out,” said Roberts, “That Dr. Fauci in congressional hearings unequivocally said that the NIAID did not fund gain-of-function research at Wuhan, but he did not deny that the NIH [National Institutes of Health] was funding gain-of-function research here in the United States.”
Fauci’s testimony that Roberts cites here is indeed supported by the facts.
On Monday, Fauci told Weijia Jiang of CBS he still believes that Covid-19 originated naturally.
NEW: Dr. Fauci tells me that his opinion about the origins of COVID-19 have not changed: He believes that it is “highly likely” that it first occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human. Since no one is 100% sure, he’s open to a thorough investigation.
— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 24, 2021
Dr. Fauci said that does not mean he believes the virus first emerged in a lab, as some have suggested.
He does not know anything about the three researchers at the Wuhan lab who sought hospital care in November 2019 as reported by the WSJ.
— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 24, 2021
Watch above via Fox News.
