Fauci in heated exchange with Rand Paul: ‘You do not know what you are talking about’

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul shared another heated exchange Tuesday, this time with Fauci telling the senator “You do not know what you are talking about” regarding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.

During a Senate Health Committee hearing about COVID-19, Paul said the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which created a transmissible virus able to infect humans. He also implied Fauci had previously lied to Congress about the research.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, quickly refuted the claim.

“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement,” Fauci said, before Paul attempted to clarify what gain-of-function research is. “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about.”

Paul continued to argue about the definition of gain-of-function and accused Fauci of “obfuscating the truth.”

“It’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this, because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic,” Paul said.

Fauci once again refuted Paul’s claims, citing that it was “molecularly impossible” for the NIH-funded research to have been responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19).

“This is a pattern that Senator Paul has been doing at multiple hearings, based on no reality,” Fauci said. “He’s talking about gain-of-function. This has been evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain-of-function definition. I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied, certainly not before Congress. Cased closed.”

Watch the entire exchange in the C-SPAN video above.

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