Remember when politicians said this was just a "crazy conspiracy theory?"
Times have changed.
Earlier this month, just hours after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) dragged Anthony Fauci over pandemic misinformation - and the fact that Fauci's NIH funded risky collaborations at the Wuhan Institute of Virology - the nation's top virologist (and highest-paid government employee) furiously backpedaled over the origins of the pandemic in what we can only assume was an effort to redirect attention from his own culpability.
Recall that since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, Fauci parroted CCP talking points - insisting that the virus couldn't possibly have come from a Chinese lab.
Yet, hours after Rand Paul's grilling - Fauci suddenly changed his tune during an afternoon Poynter event on "United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking," according to the Fox News.
When asked by Katie Sanders of Politifact if he was still confident that COVID-19 developed naturally, Fauci responded: "No actually. "I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened."
"Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus," he added, nervously.
Watch below - and notice how Fauci gets upset that Paul brought up NIH funding - while misdirecting with the false argument nobody is making that the NGO he funded, EcoHealth Alliance, participated in the creation of COVID-19.
As we noted in March, Fauci's NIH "funded a number of projects that involved WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab's work with bat coronaviruses. While in 2017, Fauci's agency resumed funding a controversial grant without the approval of a government oversight body, according to the Daily Caller.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, top right, speaks via teleconference during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Amid the sharpest downturn in U.S. history, President Donald Trump has been pressing to begin relaxing the lockdowns that have shuttered businesses despite warnings from some public health experts that doing so too quickly risks a further spread of the virus. Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images