MSNBC Anchor: Rand Paul Baselessly Accused Fauci of Being Responsible for Covid (UPDATE)

MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin on Thursday called out Senator Rand Paul for “baselessly” accusing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci of being responsible for Covid-19.

The comment stems from the debate over whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research in the lab in Wuhan, China, that is believed by many to be where the coronavirus leaked from. Following a clip of Republicans, including House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), calling for hearings into the origins of the coronavirus earlier on Thursday, Mohyeldin remarked that Scalise also mentioned that there should be hearings into whether the United States provided gain-of-function research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

“Scalise also mentioned there had been the gain-of-function research which is something that Senator Rand Paul has brought up, baselessly insinuating that Dr. Fauci somehow responsible for the Covid virus. We should note that Senator Rand Paul says that he’s asking the DOJ for a criminal referral against Fauci,” said Mohyeldin. “So in the broader context of the conversation around the vaccine and Covid-19, is this a good faith vaccine messaging campaign, or are party leaders still feeding into these conspiracy theories?”

Few are suggesting that Fauci actually created Covid-19, as Mohyeldin hinted at here. But any attempt to suggest it is unfair to question Fauci’s culpability in the funding of the Wuhan lab is disingenuous.

On Tuesday, Paul and Fauci sparred during a Senate committee hearing as the former asked the latter if he would retract his statement refuting in May that there was gain-of-function research by the NIH for the Wuhan lab.

Gain-of-function research is where viruses are made to be more transmissible or deadly.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the NIH gave funding to a nonprofit that in turn gave $600,000 in funding to the Wuhan lab. In 2017, the WIV founded that a coronavirus from bats that is transmissible to humans. The NIH was listed in the study as a funder.

A 2014 NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, worth more than $666,000, that funded the WIV research stated it would be used to evaluate “the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China.” The grant description said that one of the project’s goals is: “Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.”

Replying to Paul asking “you take an animal virus and you increase transmissibility to human, you’re saying that is not gain of function,” Fauci said, “That is correct. Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you’re talking about!”

In response to the Paul-Fauci exchange, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin tweeted, “Hey guys, @RandPaul was right and Fauci was wrong. The NIH was funding gain of function research in Wuhan but NIH pretended it didn’t meet their ‘gain of function’ definition to avoid their own oversight mechanism. SorryNotSorry if that doesn’t fit your favorite narrative.”

A spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance told The Washington Post in May, “The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work. EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” Hence, the spokesperson claimed it’s not gain-of-function research because “conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China” does not fit that definition.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

CORRECTION (8:10 a.m. Friday) — A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Mohyeldin called out Paul for “baselessly” accusing Fauci of funding gain of function research. He called the senator out for baselessly being responsible for Covid-19. The headline and post have been updated.

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