Rand Paul: Dems Know the “Consensus Is Shifting” on Fauci

Rand Paul says Democrats are “quietly” beginning to understand they got it wrong on COVID orthodoxy and the imagined infallibility of Anthony Fauci.

Now that’s something.

Remember back when the senator would question the nation’s top doctor about the U.S. funding gain-of-function research and Fauci would get mad?

“Sen. Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about. And I want to say that officially: You do not know what you’re talking about!”

After jousting a few more times in Senate hearings, Paul kept asking important questions that no reporter was ever going to ask about the U.S. National Institute of Health’s alleged involvement with the Wuhan lab in China.

Fauci just kept saying, pretty much every time, that the senator didn’t know what he was talking about.

Then we learned Paul knew what he was talking about.

While the supposed ‘conspiracy theory’ summarily known as the ‘lab leak theory’ has not been proven to be the origin of COVID-19, it’s now believed to be the likeliest cause of the pandemic by many, including the Department of Energy.

“New intelligence has prompted the Energy Department to conclude that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic,” the Times reported in February, “though U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus, American officials said on Sunday.”

In a broad interview about the pandemic and its legacy released this week, Sen. Paul told Free the People’s Matt Kibbe (who is on the board of BASEDPolitics) that Democrats have been humbly admitting to him and other Republicans that they might have got some of the pandemic narrative wrong. 

On Fauci and gain-of-function research in particular.

“Even now, Democrats are quietly coming to us, they know the consensus is switching on this,” Paul said. 

“They still don’t want to be part of it because Fauci’s the leader of the Democrat party now for them,” Paul told Kibbe. “He’s this icon and they don’t want to do anything that tarnishes him. And they see it as a partisan effort.”

Paul continued, “They’re coming quietly to me and saying, ‘well, we probably would work on a bill to maybe regulate gain-of-function research, how taxpayer dollars are spent on this.’”

Kibbe observed, “Arrogance isn’t a strong enough word for this kind of central planning, manipulating human existence itself. I can’t think of a strong enough word to explain how insane that sounds.”

Rand Paul replied, “There’s a healthy dose of arrogance and elitism in all of this, of any kind, sort of central planning. In several of the exchanges with Fauci I would say ‘show some humility, man.’” 

“Not exactly like that, but have some humility,” he added.

Like this article? Check out the latest BASEDPolitics podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or below: