Yesterday Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) advanced a resolution in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee (HSGAC) today that refers former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony S. Fauci to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution.

Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, refusing to answer questions last week after Paul subpoenaed him.

It sounds bad for Fauci. Why would an innocent person refuse to answer questions if they didn’t have something to hide? Fauci always spoke freely before, why is he only refusing to answer these questions if not because he is guilty of…what exactly?

Paul and his Republican colleagues on HSGAC claim that Fauci was not allowed to plead the Fifth because President Joe Biden issued Fauci a preemptive pardon on his way out of office. Therefore, they have recommended he be prosecuted for contempt of Congress because he asserted his right to avoid implicating himself in a McCarthyist stain on our democracy designed to entrap him.

US senators just voted to prosecute a career public servant for asserting his Constitutional rights because it benefits them politically.

This should scare the hell out of every American who values their right to not be criminally prosecuted because it is politically convenient for the ruling party to do so. We aren’t supposed to do that in America. We categorically do not do that in America.

The Trump administration is doing it in America anyway. And if we don’t do something about that now, we may not be able to do anything at all about it in the future.

Contempt for the Constitution

Last week, Paul subpoenaed Fauci to appear before HSGAC, after the latter declined an invitation for a GOP-only closed-door interrogation transcribed interview. Fauci likely declined after departing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of uninformative documents that she claimed showed evidence of a so-called “lab leak.” She claimed that it proved Fauci was some sort of Deep State emerging infectious diseases puppet master (implied), who was in league with everyone from CDC to North Korea (implied), played the entire intelligence community like a virtuoso (implied), exported dangerous research to foreign labs as part of a globalist scheme to start vaccine bioweapon pandemics (implied), and gave millions of taxpayer dollars to China to manufacture ever-more-deadly viruses (implied). She also claimed Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 and this somehow means the pardon is canceled (implied), even though it covers that time period. Or the pardon will be (implied). The pardon might not even be valid because Biden delegated pardons to someone else who used an autopen (implied). Fauci is definitely a criminal (implied)!

It’s very unclear why an unsupported and demonstrably made-up crime would be a pretext for canceling his pardon, but I suspect Fauci is going to have to endure a lot more of this.

The hearing itself was a complete travesty. It is one of the most disgraceful things to occur in the Senate in US history, and I include a situation in which a Southern congressman caned a Massachusetts abolitionist senator to within an inch of his life in 1856 for denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

I also include Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI)’s anticommunist blacklists and show trials. After World War II, the American public was very concerned about the Soviet Union, given it was run by Joseph Stalin AKA Big Brother himself. McCarthy exploited the “Red Scare” to drag political enemies before the Senate to manufacture charges against them. First it was political opponents within the government, then gay people, then celebrities, then anyone who was unlucky enough to be accused of being a Commie.

Frequently, those manufactured charges were not actually treason or communist sympathizing or being a Soviet spy, but perjury or contempt of Congress. That’s because the people targeted by McCarthy hadn’t committed any crimes other than being his political rivals. Just like Fauci.

Paul is a disgrace as a Senator who is betraying his constituents and his oath of office. His oath of office concerns his loyalty to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump. The same Constitution that includes the right to refuse to participate in an undemocratic and illegal violation of the civil liberties we hold most dear.

Paul is going all out on social media to suggest Fauci was so guilty of starting the pandemic by funding gain of function virology research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that a conviction is a mere formality. Unfortunately for Paul, it’s a pretty important formality.

Biden did not pardon Fauci for existing convicted crimes. He pardoned him for crimes that he might be charged with in the future. That is not evidence of guilt. It’s evidence that Biden anticipated that Trump loyalists would try to blame Fauci for the pandemic. Biden was right! Rand Paul’s modern-day McCarthyist scapegoating seems to be exactly what he was hoping to avoid. That pardon is the only reason that Fauci has not been charged already.

When Gabbard says he lied to Congress, she means his testimony at this hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic:

At this hearing, Fauci claimed that all the evidence to date indicates that the pandemic began by transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from a live animal sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China.

I am an author on many of the key papers that demonstrate there are no laboratory scenarios that plausibly explain the evidence we have about how the pandemic began. To scientifically prove a lab leak, you have to have evidence the virus was in the lab. There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 or any virus that could have been engineered to become SARS-CoV-2 was at WIV or in any lab prior to the pandemic. There is no evidence of a lab leak at all. There is a lot of evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was at the Huanan market, in the exact corner of the market where live animals were sold. When Fauci testified that there is no evidence for a lab leak, there is no way any of the viruses known to be at WIV could have become SARS-CoV-2, and all the evidence points to natural origin, he told Congress the truth.

The MAGA lackeys installed throughout the government are never deterred by something like the truth when it comes to pursuing political vendettas. Gabbard is no exception, making sure to do plenty of handwaving about implied crimes and providing zero evidence of any. Paul is also no exception, which is why he let his McCarthyist flag fly.

I suspect the plan was always to attempt to demand Fauci appear and testify truthfully. The pardon is only good through January 2025, so anything he says now is fair game for prosecution. Paul originally intended to force Fauci to truthfully deny he started the pandemic and then accuse him of perjury. When Fauci asserted his constitutional right to not participate in his own railroading, Paul had to switch to plan B—refer Fauci to DOJ for contempt of Congress because he insisted on the protections afforded to him by law. Whatever puts the bad guy behind bars!

Except Fauci isn’t a bad guy. This isn’t getting Al Capone on charges of tax evasion. This is political persecution of a lifelong government employee who funded research that generated trillions in revenue and saved millions of lives. Fauci is not guilty of anything besides having a diary, a phone, and an exceptional career in public service. It is not a crime to assert our legal rights—including our right to refuse participating in our own undoing. The Constitution has no political party. No matter how many Executive Orders they issue or how much bullshit they spin about “presidential privilege,” Trump’s regime is not empowered to decide whether the Constitution is valid, or whether invoking guaranteed rights and freedoms is a crime instead of the law of the land.

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If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime

The old adage goes that if you don’t want to face the legal consequences, you shouldn’t violate the law. Most people (self included) think this is a reasonable approach to criminal justice. However, Fauci is caught in a bizarre culpability loop in which he supposedly commits a crime no matter what he does. Anything he says can and will be used against him. If he truthfully says that all the evidence suggests the pandemic began naturally by transmission from an animal to a human, he will be accused of the crime of perjury. If he asserts his legal rights to defend himself against false charges, he will be accused of the crime of contempt. That’s what happened yesterday.

The problem here is that a big reason for writing the US Constitution and this whole democracy thing was to prevent exactly this sort of thing: an oppressive political regime wielding its power against its own people. In America, you can speak freely without fearing being imprisoned for it. Or you could. Fauci cannot, and there’s more where that came from.

And the other problem is that I can’t think of a situation where an authoritarian government constrained their political persecution efforts to a single scapegoat. Paul has already expanded his scope to several of my colleagues. Based on the thinnest of pretexts, the DOJ has charged multiple virologists with federal crimes.

One of my colleagues and friends, Fauci’s Senior Advisor David Morens, is facing more than 50 years in federal prison for using a personal email address. I witnessed this crime, since I received emails from the Deep State Gmail of one career public health scientist in a group chat.

Several on the thread (including me) were using our public institutional emails with no problem, since we weren’t actually doing anything wrong. We were not plotting reckless new gain-of-function studies, misspending federal grant money, spying for China, conspiring to cover anything up, or cooking up bioweapons (because we never do any of these actually illegal things). We were mostly talking shit about lab leakers. The emails constituting the evidence of Morens’ crime were released as public records years ago. You can go read them to see how non-conspiratorial they are.

It doesn’t matter. Morens has had a distinguished five decade career in public service, both as an officer in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and then in the federal government. Morens was sucked in because he worked as a Senior Advisor to the NIAID Director. He knew and worked with Fauci for decades, so the net expanded to him first.

From what I hear, this net is about to widen to more of my colleagues and friends.

Uh oh

At least two certifiably unhinged MAGA “experts” think this should include me. Former (?—unclear, he tried to quit) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) Vice-Chair Robert Malone took a break from appearing on right wing tinfoil hat media and posting self-aggrandizing shit on Substack to tweet about my co-conspiratorial ways.

To spark even more joy in my life, Paul’s favorite science advisor, Rutgers chemistry professor Richard Ebright, showed up to claim that I am even “cited” in the indictment—okay, not by name or even a vague mention, but DOJ totally meant to include me. Whew, good thing I’m still in the “and others” category and not mentioned by name! Not yet, anyway.

Ebright once tweeted at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that I’m a potential bioterrorist because I was talking about fascism in history on Bluesky and he doesn’t like me. Except he tweets about me (from behind a block, Richard the Lionheart he is not). A lot. His abuse is puerile, facile, and relentless. He literally copy-pastes the same insults hundreds of times into the replies of anyone who unwittingly dares to have an opinion he disagrees with. Some of my co-authors and I who have been similarly harassed tried reporting it to Rutgers. Our complaint was even covered in Science! Unfortunately, there was no follow up story to write, because Rutgers did exactly nothing to respond. My own institution has likewise done nothing, save for our leadership team suggesting that I brought it on myself by defending my own scientific work.

It would normally be pretty pathetic to be Piscataway, New Jersey’s answer to the question “what would Jabba the Hutt be like if he had tenure, specialized in bacterial transcription, and bore a lifelong grudge against virology research and probably every woman who ever laughed at his slobbery ass?” Then I realize that those thousands of tweets about my imaginary reckless criminal virology activities—all of which are completely untrue—are potentially evidence of my guilt in the cover up that my entire profession will be accused of. Here’s the most recent one about me: I’m still promoting fraud, which is my sole notable accomplishment (besides latent bioterrorism, I guess).

Just because I am accustomed to people saying terrible things to and about me on the hellsite doesn’t mean it has no impact. Ebright has a lot of friends who really like to tell me everything that is wrong with me: I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m evil, I’m reckless, I’m a bitch, I’m inept, I’m a terrorist, I’m a bad scientist. The relentless abuse from this one guy over the past six years has taken a toll on my self-esteem and mental health. Most of the time, it’s like having a cramp in your foot. It hurts, but it’s probably not going to kill you. Under normal circumstances, anyway.

At some point, this bloated old toad will be able to graduate from feeding off the abusive tweets that sustain him in the darkness of his basement lair to actually informing on his enemies. In the past year, as I have grappled with my own demons in accepting our current dire political reality, it occurred to me that at some point he might have the power to whisper more names of scientists who have done nothing illegal or wrong into Paul or some other morally devoid loyalist in the Trump regime. I’m pretty sure I know just the group of scientists, including one incompetent, terrorism-inclined dumb bitch, who he plans to snitch on first!

Fauci is the rock that Trump is throwing in the pond. I’m not in the first wave of people hit by the expanding ripple, but I’ll be sooner than some others. It won’t be limited to virologists. It won’t be limited to scientists or communists or “antifa” or trans people or immigrants. It will be everyone. When that wave gets to you and how hard it hits will depend on whether your value to the Party is as an asset or a threat to be destroyed.

Be careful if you have enemies. If Rand Paul succeeds in doing this to his enemy, it will be easier for other Trump cronies to do it to theirs.

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Contempt for Congress

We are coming up on the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at the CDC that left Marine Corps veteran and DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose dead in the line of duty and an entire federal agency in fear for their lives. The attacker believed he had been injured by COVID-19 vaccines. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. didn’t mention it for a full day. Less than three weeks later, he fired CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to give Kennedy’s desired anti-vax vaccine schedule the old autopen treatment. Trump has still never acknowledged this domestic terror attack against a federal agency.

My colleague Céline Gounder told The Guardian that “if you’re 40 and choosing between US government service and industry,” surviving domestic terrorism and being indicted by the DOJ on charges that are openly made up are now critical variables in this equation. Much like the withdrawal of foreign aid programs and imposition of travel restrictions have greatly hampered the Ebola response in DRC by discouraging people from even signing up in the first place, the prospect of being punished for serving your country’s best interests is off-putting to most thinking Americans. The disincentives to pursuing needed work in science or medicine keep stacking up.

Now, in addition to the lack of jobs, funds, and resources from the federal government, American scientists will face the prospect of being attacked by extremists, both within and without our own government. Pursuing a career as a scientist, clinician, or public health professional used to be a calling for the good of humanity. We understood that science advances our society, stimulates our economy, and gives us tremendous advantages and opportunities at home and abroad. Now, a career in science risks being a defendant in a McCarthyist nightmare. It risks being a target of violence, financial ruin, and the loss of our most basic civil rights.

These are truly bleak times. I am so heartbroken about how far my country has fallen that sometimes my sorrow feels more painful than the medical condition I’m dealing with. I underestimated the impact that the constant traumatization and grieving the loss of another world that I thought we would live in would have on me. But I refuse to surrender to fascists, and despair is their tool. So I’ve started a practice of finding something positive to hold onto, even when I’m feeling the most hopeless. Here goes.

McCarthy was a corrupt, power-hungry tyrant who abused every authority he ever held as a US Senator. But eventually, Americans realized that the only thing “Un-American” about McCarthy’s witch hunts were the witch hunts themselves. Outraged Americans demanded McCarthy was censured after charges brought by his fellow Republicans, who shunned him for the rest of his life. He remained in office for 2 more years before alcoholic hepatitis took him down. His name eventually became synonymous with corrupt abuse of power. When he used his senatorial power to attack his political enemies, he resembled the communist dictator he used to justify his political purges more than a patriot upholding his oath to our democracy. The American people saw this and eventually stopped it the way patriots do: by asserting our Constitutional rights. McCarthy died a drunk and a junkie, stripped of his power, remembered only in scathing obituaries and history books, and beloved by no one. May Rand Paul and every one of his traitor colleagues meet the same end. May we have the courage and the conviction to make that happen.

Yesterday Americans woke up to US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appeared on CNN State of the Union to croak at Dana Bash like the ghost in The Grudge, death rattling off a laundry list of nonsense that remains highly lethal despite its absolute implausibility.

As usual, Kennedy took America on a shambling journey through the wonderful, backwards world of MAHA revisionist history. In this world—which, to be clear, never existed or happened at all—we were all brought to our knees by totalitarian dictator Joe Biden and his sinister freedom-hating henchman, dangerous gain of function virologist Anthony S. Fauci. From his lofty perch at the deep state National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) communist headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, Fauci pulled the strings of the entire federal government like the master marionette that he became after nearly fifty years of public service. With a fistful of viruses and experimental gene therapy shots, he decreed the public be locked down over a fake pandemic so that Big Brother Biden could seize control and take away our constitutional rights!

Kennedy covered his full routine, from autism to vaccines, and even threw in some new material. It was news to me that one of my colleagues cooked up RSV in a lab at some point!

This is Kennedy’s favorite method: show up and hit the interviewer with a firehose of bullshit so forceful it throws them off. Bash did correct a few of his most egregious lies, which put Kennedy in a very vexed state. He does not like it when his lies are exposed. So I decided to do that comprehensively.

The tyranny that wasn’t

Most of what Kennedy is able to get away with comes from the public’s willingness to accept the lie that the pandemic was both Biden’s fault and intention, because it was a communist plot to impose dictatorship on America by exploiting public health law, vaccination, and virology research could to tear up the Constitution and crush liberty. Remember when we were locked up in our homes while ICUs were empty because COVID was made up? Me neither.

1. “We have the highest death rate from COVID of any nation on Earth.”

False. That would be Peru. With a big chunk of eastern Europe and the Balkans in between. The US is all the way down at number 16 when this is calculated at the same rate Kennedy himself described. These are cumulative deaths since the pandemic started, so they show all deaths from COVID-19 ever recorded. I made a figure.

2. Lockdowns “shut down 3.5 million businesses in our country with no due process, no just compensation. All of our churches closed, our schools, and our children are still paying the price for that.”

False. An analysis by the Federal Reserve found that, although there were upward of a million temporary business closures, fewer than 200,000 business closed up shop for good in 2020. And new business applications eventually surged. Although an analysis of Census bureau data found that active business owners dropped by 22%— about 3.3 million business owners—from February to April 2020, this doesn’t equate to 3.5 million businesses being shut down.

Furthermore, the “lockdowns” in question were endorsed wholeheartedly by Trump, who took full credit for the idea and bragged that it was the best pandemic response in the world. American lockdowns were “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America.” Trump was proud to close schools, churches, restaurants, and plenty of businesses.

Trump was also very proud of the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) and unemployment relief funds he set up to offset the economic impact of these closures. These programs since been looted shamelessly by millions of fraudsters. Naturally, that includes Trump’s friends and family members.

3. “The president was trying to reopen the country. When he left, the country was kept closed for another year — almost a year and a half after that.”

False. Kennedy would like people to forget how time works and who shut things down. The peak of restrictions occurred in the second quarter of 2020, right around the same time that Trump was convening daily progressively more insane COVID update press conferences. I’ll never forget how I yelped on April 23, 2020, when he said that injecting Lysol or UV light would be “almost a cleaning.”

The liberty-ruining “lockdowns” Kennedy hates were Donald Trump’s idea, not Joe Biden’s. Do you remember 15 Days to Slow the Spread? On March 16, 2020, Trump complimented the White House press pool on their social distancing skills and told all Americans to stay home, avoid gathering, avoid travel, avoid going out to restaurants, and close schools. Let me refresh your memory:

Most restrictions ended by June 2021, although this varied from state to state. Big Brother Biden was only able to dispense absolute public health authoritarianism for about four months, not a full year after Trump left office.

4. “There were ICUs that were empty all over the country, including in New York at the height.”

False. This is a Plandemic conspiracy theory dogwhistle meant to suggest that the pandemic was actually a hoax. That is admittedly inconsistent with Kennedy’s assertion that the US had more COVID deaths than any other country, but the conspiracy theories invariably conflict with one another. Consistency of belief is one way to assess trustworthiness, especially on scientific topics. People who hold conflicting views—like the pandemic was the worst thing ever and also it was made up—often do not provide reliable or evidence-based information.

This is also a demonstrable lie. In New York, “the height” of the first big pandemic surge occurred in spring 2020. The ICUs—and hospitals in general—were so overwhelmed that Trump dispatched the USNS Comfort to float like a plague ship under the stern gaze of Lady Liberty in New York Harbor. A friend and colleague at Columbia, a physician at New York Presbyterian, described their workplace in April 2020 to me as “the fucking apocalypse.”

ICU and hospital capacity changes during epidemics and COVID cases surge in waves geographically, so during that period, ICUs and hospital beds were likely empty in other parts of the country. But that doesn’t mean the pandemic was a fictional excuse for locking Americans down in their homes.

5. “During covid, we completely dismantled our constitutional rights.”

False. At no point during the pandemic under either Trump or Biden were constitutional rights violated. The government didn’t force people to stay in their homes. The police didn’t arrest people for going for a walk or going to the grocery store. Nobody was detained because they weren’t wearing a mask. Joe Biden’s COVID policies never deprived Americans of their constitutional rights.

What did happen under both Biden and Trump was that state and local leaders enforced different policies around the country. Businesses and schools elected whether or not to impose vaccine requirements or mask policies. State and local governments passed laws and enforced regulations governing these things in various ways. There was no dismantling of our constitutional freedoms.

6. “We began censoring people in violation.”

False. Nobody was censored, especially Kennedy.

I wonder if Kennedy and I speak the same language sometimes, because he has a completely different understanding of what “censorship” means than I do. He has previously claimed that he was “deplatformed everywhere”. In reality, his Instagram account was removed in 2021. Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vax organization he founded, had their YouTube channel suspended in 2021 and their Meta accounts permanently removed in August 2022. All were fully restored by 2023.

He also wrote four books: The Real Anthony Fauci, A Letter to Liberals, Vax-Unvax (with the Johnny Appleseed of measles, CHD’s “Chief Scientific Officer” Brian Hooker), and The Wuhan Cover-Up. His publisher claims that they have sold more than a million copies and lasted weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists.

He appeared more than fifty times on cable news, although that number is much higher if you include the fringe right wing and anti-vax news ecosystems. He also wrote five op-eds for Newsweek. He wrote almost fifty pieces for The Defender, CHD’s newsletter. He appeared on every major MAGA/MAHA influencer podcast: Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Jordan Peterson.

He ran for President. When he dropped out of the election and endorsed Trump, his MAHA base arguably was what gave Trump the votes to win. He was rewarded for this with a position that will allow him to put millions of Americans at risk of an early preventable death.

None of that seems like “censorship” to me.

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Lockdown Bobby

7. “Anthony Fauci was mismanaging the COVID pandemic, and was doing it under the Biden administration. President Trump wanted to end the lockdowns.”

False. Fauci was not in charge of the US response and there were never federal lockdowns. Trump didn’t want to end the lockdowns. He recommended them! Actual restrictions on gatherings and businesses were imposed by state and local government officials (usually governors).

They were recommended by the White House Coronavirus Task Force chaired by Kennedy’s predecessor, HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Fauci was one of many government advisors including CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Task Force Response Coordinator Deborah Birx, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, and CMS Administrator Seema Verma. Fauci was not the only guy in the room offering advice. He wasn’t even in charge of the advice task force.

It’s important to remember that no matter how much he distances himself now, at the time, Trump said all of these recommendations were his idea. Trump was not trying to end the lockdowns. He was taking credit for them.

8. “They were doing it because Anthony Fauci was telling them from the top, ‘you need to lock down.’”

False. Fauci had no such authority and there was never a federal lockdown.

9. “Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the expert, was lying about everything, about masks, about the social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying.”

False. Fauci is an expert, but he was not “lying about everything.” Fauci did say, incorrectly, that masks did not work early on. It’s also true that social distancing was implemented without much data to back it up. That’s the thing about pandemics and crises in general: even experts are faced with vast knowledge gaps, and have to do the best they can.

Fauci did not lie about “natural immunity.” This complaint is that vaccines were still recommended (and required at some workplaces) for people who already had COVID. This wasn’t Fauci’s idea; it was recommended because we didn’t know how protective infection-acquired immunity would be and it would be much more variable than vaccine-induced immunity. The vaccines were demonstrably safe and effective, so there was minimal risk and significant benefit from that recommendation. Studies since then have shown that so-called “hybrid immunity” (vaccinating people who previously had COVID) produces the broadest and most durable protection.

Fauci also did not lie about transmission from the vaccine. At no point did Fauci claim that vaccination prevents transmission, because that’s not a statement most competent virologists or vaccine researchers would make. Most vaccines do not completely prevent transmission. Vaccines stop epidemics when enough people are immune that sustained transmission becomes impossible because there aren’t enough susceptible hosts around.

Finally, Fauci did not lie about the source of COVID. My own published research demonstrates that, but here’s more information about that:

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Freedom of quackery

10. “There are 15 million frontline physicians around the world.” Partly true — about 14.8 million physicians, but not “frontline.”

False premise, true fact. Although there are about 15 million people with a degree that bestows the title of physician, it is absurd to suggest that every single one of them cried out for ivermectin and…ignored themselves, I guess? I am not sure how every physician in the world can be silenced when they are also the medical establishment. Also, this counts people like NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and rejected Surgeon General nominee Casey Means who have never been board certified or maintained a serious clinical practice, so “frontline” is an essentially meaningless term.

11. “There were therapeutics out there that were working. There were doctors that were having no deaths from COVID and treating, in some cases, thousands of patients. And we weren't listening to them. Instead, we were doing the opposite — we were shutting them down.”

False. The drugs were tested and failed. A mountain of studies now show that neither ivermectin nor hydroxychlorine work to treat COVID-19. And it’s not as though drug discovery, repurposing, and development weren’t successful. Monoclonal antibodies were available in months. When dexamethasone was shown to improve clinical outcomes for severe COVID-19, it was implemented into clinical practice right away. Paxlovid was also made available under an emergency use authorization and rolled out quickly. No therapeutics that actually worked were suppressed.

12. “And one of the mistakes we made in the last time was suppressing those rights so people weren't being heard. Doctors who were saying you're doing it wrong or being marginalized and vilified.”

False. The supposedly marginalized and vilified doctors he’s referring to have made millions with ivermectin scamming. Trump pardoned one of them for her crimes on January 6, 2021, giving her extra credibility with her more pro-fascist marks.

13. “You are scaring people. Because that was the job of CNN.”

False. I’m all for having a discussion about the mainstream media’s many failures to meet the moment, both during the pandemic and now. But it is plainly stupid to say that CNN’s job is “scaring people.” This is Kennedy’s attempt to downplay the pandemic and further tilt America’s ability to understand reality by denigrating the free press.

14. Studies showing that COVID disinformation cost as many as 200,000 American lives are “nonsense” and “actually don’t exist.”

False. Here are two studies, in their full existential glory.

15. The media was “punishing people for not trusting the experts.”

False. Time for your daily lesson in Orwellian doublespeak. In this context, “punishment” means grifters losing their medical licenses for selling unproven or ineffective treatments for COVID, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and anything that ails you and can be prescribed via telemedicine or compounded.

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The DGOF virologists are at it again

16. “People have been trying to put guardrails around it for generations and it hasn’t worked.”

False. I realize that “generation” may be a somewhat flexible unit of measurement, but I don’t know that we’ve been struggling for generations to specifically regulate so-called “dangerous gain of function” (DGOF) research when most of the serious discussion about virology regulation and oversight started in the late 2000s. DGOF used to mean making viruses more transmissible and/or pathogenic through engineering. Now DGOF means anything involving viruses that the administration can weaponize politically.

If we are talking human generations, I suppose that we’ve now been grappling with this for a single generation, assuming a teen pregnancy.

17. “And clearly, [the] COVID-19 pandemic and many other global pandemics that we have have come from gain-of-function research.”

False. No pandemic in recorded history has been traced to gain-of-function research. The 1918 H1N1, 1957 H2N2, 1968 H3N2 and 2009 pH1N1 flu pandemics were all zoonotic. HIV-1 can be traced back to viruses that infected people at the turn of the 20th century.

The only research-related pandemic is 1977 H1N1 “Russian flu,” which was nearly identical to frozen strains from the 1950s. Although the circumstances are not well-known, it is likely that this was either a vaccine trial or human challenge study gone wrong. However, it was not the result of DGOF research. This was a naturally occurring flu strain that leaked from a lab, not something that had been engineered or selected.

18. RSV is “the biggest killer of kids in this country today.”

False. The biggest killer of kids in America is gun violence, which takes nearly 5000 children’s lives every year. RSV causes 100-300 deaths per year in children under five, according to CDC.

19. “The RSV epidemic that we have…came from these kind of experiments.”

False. RSV was first isolated from sick monkeys in 1956, which is when they discovered that a whole bunch of babies and people had antibodies to it. That means it was already a widespread human pathogen, so if it was the result of DGOF, the virologists who did it must have been time travelers or exceptionally gifted clairvoyants. What lab was doing cloning and molecular virology before we worked out the central dogma of molecular biology?

RSV is also not an epidemic. It is an endemic pathogen that recurs seasonally. That has nothing to do with its origin, but it speaks to how poorly Kennedy understands the terminology he uses.

20. “The Lyme disease almost certainly came from this kind of research.”

False. This is a conspiracy theory that suggests the CIA rescued Nazi scientists from Nuremberg and brought them to Plum Island, a USDA animal disease research facility in New York. Once there, they made the bacteria that causes Lyme disease and lab leaked it by releasing ticks around Long Island and Connecticut. This requires said Nazis to have mastered synthetic biology methods so advanced they don’t exist now, except in the early 1950s. Evidently they were so secretive the methods they use elude us to this day…which makes sense, considering it’s all made up. Despite the stupidity of this conspiracy theory, it is widespread within HHS. Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary appeared on a right-wing podcast promoting it and Kennedy has incorporated it into policy.

Lyme disease is caused by bacteria transmitted through tick bites, mostly Borrelia burgdorferi (and some other Borrelia species as well). B. burgdorferi DNA has been amplified from museum samples (Ixodes ticks collected on Long Island in 1945 and Peromyscus leucopus deer mouse museum skins from the 1890s). Genomic studies show that North American Borrelia species evolved over tens of thousands of years. In Europe, clinical cases of Lyme disease were first observed in 1909. These bacteria have been around for a long time. They weren’t cooked up by secret Nazis in a deep state government lab.

21. Kennedy thinks that there is not “one instance in history where research that came out of this kind of experimentation has actually provided us something beneficial.”

False. Virology research, including studies that qualify as DGOF, is the reason why Operation Warp Speed succeeded. If there hadn’t been twenty years of fundamental studies of SARS-related coronaviruses—many of which were funded by NIAID and carried out by my colleagues facing persecution today—we would not have known to target the prefusion spike protein or that mRNA vaccines were likely to be safe and effective. This work made COVID vaccines possible in 10 months. It saved millions of American lives.

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Measles manipulation

22. “This is an international outbreak.”

False. While it is true that measles is spreading around the world, the outbreak in America is hardly “international.” Of this year’s more than 2300 measles cases, CDC reports that only 16 cases were imported from abroad.

23. “The reason we're having a measles outbreak because of the COVID lockdowns, because…children during that period did not get vaccinated.”

False. One fifth of the US cases in 2026 are under age five and were born 2021–2026, entirely after the lockdown window. A third of the US cases are adults over the age of 20. Neither group are the right age to have missed MMR vaccination due to Trump’s COVID lockdowns, which primarily occurred in 2020.

In 2019-2020, kindergarten MMR coverage was 95.2%. It has fallen every year since schools reopened: 93% (2022-23), 92.7% (2023-24), 92.5% (2024-25), with exemptions at a record 3.6%. Exemptions are up in 36 states and above 5% in 17 states. Non-medical exemptions are >93% of all exemptions. Outbreak epicenters track with decreased vaccination rates: Gaines County, TX is at 77% kindergarten MMR, Spartanburg County, SC is at 88.9%, and Utah’s tricounty region is more than 16% unvaccinated.

24. “Mexico has 15 times the amount of measles per capita that we have. Canada has four times the amount of measles. England has two times the amount of measles.”

False premise, true statistics. Per PAHO and UKHSA: Mexico has 14.4X, Canada has 4.2X, and the UK has 2X the cases that the US has. These numbers don’t tell the true story if you look at them as a snapshot in time.

Canada logged 5,162 cases in 2025 and is down ~80% this year, due to the Public Health Agency of Canada’s immunization efforts in response to Canada’s loss of elimination status last November. The UK is currently tracking below its own 2025 total of 959. The US is the only one of the four setting a 35-year record for the second consecutive year.

25. “Doing better at handling it than any country in the world.”

False. Japan, Australia, South Korea and most of Western Europe are far below the US in cases per capita. The US can barely manage to conduct basic genomic sequencing. The 2026 US elimination review was postponed to the Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO) November meeting, partly because CDC's measles lab lacks the staff and funding to carry out genomic sequencing and epidemiology. CDC has had to lean heavily on the Broad Institute and Utah's state lab just to keep up. By “keep up” I mean deposit whole genome sequences to NCBI GenBank…eventually.

26. “Did I cause 137,000 cases?”

False (?). Hard to call this “false” because this isn’t anything intelligible. There’s no obvious figure that correlates with 137,000 cases. I couldn’t find any measles statistic in the ballpark of 137,000 cases that he might be referring to. WHO's most recent global estimates are for 2024, during which measles caused 11 million cases and 95,000 deaths.

27. “That age group that should have gotten the MMR when they were 18 months and didn't get it, they're the ones being infected.”

False. Kennedy evidently doesn’t even read the recommended vaccine schedules he is always trying to cancel. There is no recommended 18-month MMR dose. CDC recommends primary immunization at 12–15 months, with the booster dose at 4–6 years.

28. “We have stopped the outbreaks at record speed in South Carolina, in Texas, in Utah, in Virginia.”

False. The South Carolina outbreak lasted six months, as CDC’s own modeling projected. The 2025 outbreak in West Texas was not contained until August, in part due to the fact that Kennedy’s CDC sometimes didn’t even answer the phone. The outbreak in Utah has lasted more than a year with “no clear end in sight.” The outbreak in Virginia is still ongoing. Here is CDC’s own measles map showing 2026 cases:

29. “I dispatch immediately the epidemic intelligence services to those states.”

False. It’s hard to dispatch EIS officers who no longer work at CDC. The EIS was hard-hit by the reductions in force (RIF) that Kennedy carried out upon being confirmed as HHS Secretary. While some were reinstated, the program is a shadow of its former self. And all the evidence to date shows that Kennedy’s definition of “immediate” is highly context-dependent.

30. “The Mennonites have not vaccinated since 1796, since Edward Jenner invented this smallpox vaccine.”

False. Mennonites do not oppose vaccination as a matter of religious doctrine and never have. Some communities hold anti-vaccine views, but this is not obligatory to Mennonite spiritual beliefs. As far as I am aware, there is no historical significance for Mennonites regarding Jenner’s discovery or use of vaccination as a public health practice in the 1790s.

31. “I’ve never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine.”

False. He has repeatedly questioned the MMR vaccine. For years. Here are just a few examples:

June 2019: he visited Samoa in June 2019 and corresponded with local anti-vaccine activists to exploit a recent accident with contaminated MMR vaccines to discourage vaccination. The outbreak that followed killed 83 people, mostly children under age five. Kennedy reportedly did this to conduct a “natural experiment” without the consent or knowledge of the Samoan people.

September 10, 2019: Kennedy wrote an article for CHD claiming that MMR vaccination has “an unconscionably high injury rate.”

June 2023: Kennedy tells Joe Rogan that “if you look at the kids in Africa who die from measles, or these other infectious diseases, they’re all malnourished. It’s hard for a disease to kill a healthy person. It’s hard for an infectious disease to kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system.” This is false. Viruses kill healthy people regardless of how “rugged” their immune systems are. COVID killed millions of them.

March 7, 2025: Kennedy encouraged unproven or ineffective treatments for measles instead of the MMR.

March 11, 2025: Kennedy told Sean Hannity that the MMR “does cause deaths every year,” as well as encephalitis and blindness.

April 9, 2025: “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the vaccine wanes very quickly.” The US could not have eliminated measles in 2000 if this were true. MMR durability is exceptional with two doses. More than thirty years after my second MMR dose, I still have protective titers against all three viruses.

The MMR is a great vaccine. It is 97% effective at preventing measles (Kennedy did begrudgingly note that). It is very safe. Billions of doses have been administered. The only reason that measles is spreading in the US today is that Kennedy’s lies have worked, and he has convinced people to refuse something that provides lifelong protection against truly terrible diseases.

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Autism and vaccines

32. “There's 73 studies out there and link Tylenol exposure during later pregnancy and during the perinatal period to to autism onset.”

False. There is no published review of 73 such studies, because 73 such studies do not exist. He’s likely pumping up a review of 27 reported positive associations that is a favorite for cherry-picking. This review has been heavily critiqued for its failures to include adequate controls and adjust for confounding variables. Serious conflict of interest allegations have also been made toward its senior author, Andrea Baccarelli. Baccarelli did not fully disclose that he testified as a paid expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging that Tylenol caused autism. He further did not disclose that the judge in that case ruled his testimony “unreliable” due to his “cherry-picked and misrepresented study results.”

You may recall that the Tylenol-autism issue was brought to the forefront last September in one of the most deranged press conferences I’ve ever seen. At the time, I thought it was going to be a back door to descheduling the MMR by recommending it as a series of monovalent doses.

Even HHS’s own announcement conceded that there was no clear causal evidence.

33. The Institute of Medicine “says that none of the eight vaccines that are administered during the first six months of life have ever been studied for a relationship to autism.”

False. In 2013, IOM published The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety, a report that concluded there is “no evidence base suggesting that the childhood immunization schedule is linked to… child developmental disorders.”

34. The Institute of Medicine “found two studies on the DTP vaccine and showed that it does cause autism and one on the hepatitis B vaccine that again, suggests that it does cause autism.”

False. The report says the opposite. It found one study on the diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP vaccine) and one on hepatitis B. The DTaP study was discounted because it only used unverifiable self-reported data (and was by a father-son duo of anti-vaxxers who have faced charges of practicing medicine without a license for prescribing puberty blockers to cure vaccine injuries). The hepatitis B paper was retracted in May 2026 for fundamental methodological flaws, a "critically small" sample size, and an overstated causal conclusion, which prompted Kennedy to attack the journal. Neither showed any relationship between vaccines and autism.

35. “The studies that (show no relationship between vaccines and autism) are all for one vaccine, the MMR vaccine or one ingredient, thimerosal.”

False. Whole-schedule and aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines have been studied in millions of people over decades and no link to autism has been found.

36. “Show me one of the studies that's been done on the first eight vaccines during the first six months of life. You will not find them.”

False. I found them quickly. Here you go. This search yielded 315 studies but I bet you would find more if you removed “infant” and replaced it with “baby.”

37. “Genes don’t cause epidemics.”

False. Autism isn’t an epidemic, it isn’t one condition, and it isn’t one gene. However, genes most certainly do cause epidemics, since they determine susceptibility to disease.

38. “What we were doing in Covid and and still with regard to these vaccines is getting the best information, the best science that we can. And putting it out there.”

False. This is literally an exhaustive list of Kennedy’s lies, so it is definitionally not “the best information” or “the best science.”

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BONUS MAHA Misogyny

39. “I know you're flustered now.”

When Kennedy said this he was spluttering like a venting Instant Pot, so it’s safe to say he might have been projecting a bit. I’m sure it was frustrating that Kennedy continued to make shit up and refuse to answer Bash’s questions. However, he seemed more upset that she even asked him any questions or stated any facts at all. Out of Dana Bash and the human equivalent of an autoclave that’s about to go critical, I did not think Bash deserved the title of Most Flustered.

40. “Dana, you probably don't understand this because you're not a scientist.”

Kennedy isn’t a scientist either. I am a scientist and Kennedy demonstrably does not understand anything that he’s saying, nor does he intend to. He does not care about science because he is a self-interested liar who wants to put as many Americans at risk as possible. That’s how he will seize and exercise power.

Why does this matter

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the American Society for Virology (ASV 2026!!!) in Minneapolis and it was wonderful but harrowing at the same time. My professional field is under attack. Many of my colleagues have already lost their funding. Many have lost their jobs or labs for being politically opposed or sometimes convenient. Some may be prosecuted for simply doing their jobs. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever faced. I am not alone in feeling this way.

Right now it is virology. Tomorrow it will be cancer research. Or pain research. Or nutrition research. Eventually it will be Alzheimer’s research. Mental health research. Diabetes research. All clinical research. All science.

“But wait a minute, Angie. If that happened, a lot of people would probably get sick. A lot of people would probably die!”

Yes, I know. And that’s the idea. It’s hard to accept. The reason the HHS Secretary seems to think that the path to Make America Healthy Again is to get everyone sick again is because that is his goal. He wants everyone to be sick. Or dead. Whatever. Just not healthy.

Sick people are less likely to resist new, gradually more authoritarian measures as they are implemented by faceless bureaucrats that nobody pays attention to. Sick people are more likely to focus their energy on trying to keep themselves and their families alive than on fighting back against authoritarian rule. Sick people won’t complain when Fauci is sent to prison for the crime of public service. Sick people might not feel well enough to make it out to the polls to vote. Sick people are easier to subdue. Sick people can’t fight back. Dead people are even worse at all of these things.

This is why Kennedy’s lies are more than just lies. They are a mechanism to destroy our democracy. It’s important to recognize them for what they are. And that’s why it continues to be important to remove Kennedy from his position. If your current Congressperson will not, then in November you should vote for someone who will.

ANGIE: Hi, everybody. I’m Dr. Angela Rasmussen, Science Chair for . I am here with Dr. Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University, my PhD mentor, esteemed colleague, experienced virologist, and expert on this particular topic — not necessarily Fauci’s hearing, but on virology and the type of virology research that Fauci is being accused of doing, which is, by the way, not illegal and really important scientific work.

So we just wanted to pop by here with the Save America Movement to have a little discussion about what happened earlier today at Fauci’s hearing before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee of the Senate.

So to give you a little bit of background — Vincent and I today are at the American Society for Virology annual meeting. This is the professional society for our entire field. My first ASV meeting was in 2005 when I was a graduate student in Vincent’s lab. It was in Wisconsin. This one’s in another Midwestern state very nearby. It’s really humid and miserable here, but it’s a lot of really good virology.

And we thought that it would be a really good chance to catch up, because I missed this morning’s sessions covering the Fauci hearing and Vincent was able to attend them. So I’m going to fill him in on the Fauci hearings and he’s going to fill me in on what I missed. And we’re both going to fill you in on what the context is for these hearings and what’s going on with Tony Fauci.

“The point of the hearing was for Rand Paul to continue the fiction”

ANGIE: So to give you a little bit of background, Tony Fauci was going to go in for a transcribed interview with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee of the Senate. Rand Paul has been after Fauci since 2021, when Fauci told him that he was a liar for misrepresenting the origins of the pandemic and what we know about that.

Now, in the intervening years, we’ve learned a lot more about the origins of the pandemic, including through some papers that I have contributed to. And we do not think that it came from a lab. In fact, almost all of the evidence — with the exception of the fact that the pandemic began in Wuhan — suggests the pandemic emerged from the live animal trade at the Huanan Seafood Market. And we can certainly talk about that, but that wasn’t really the point of the hearing.

The point of the hearing was for Rand Paul to go ahead and continue the fiction that it was in fact a lab leak, and that Tony Fauci funded the lab in China that made this, through a sub-award on an R01 NIH grant — which is a type of grant that NIH issues to people in the U.S. and in foreign countries. Or at least used to. They don’t anymore to the foreign countries, and not very many in the U.S. either these days.

But in any case, Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. And these sub-awards had been issued, and it was for bat coronavirus research. And Rand Paul is incorrectly claiming that Fauci knew that this work would lead to the pandemic — which it is, as Fauci put it, molecularly impossible to do. That was in his hearing in 2021, because Fauci did not say anything today.

In fact, Fauci pled the Fifth. He cited his Fifth Amendment constitutional rights against self-incrimination, even though he was preemptively pardoned by President Joe Biden for fear of something like this happening.

And to be clear, what this hearing was today was a show trial, in which Fauci pled the Fifth and every single Senate Republican who is on that committee said lie after lie about the origins of the pandemic. We had lab leak stuff. We had insertion of furin cleavage sites, which we’ll get into. We had anti-vax stuff. We had Fauci as a malignant narcissist. We had all kinds of accusations, none of which actually suggest any kind of criminal activity.

So I just wanted to fill Vincent here in on what happened, and also make everybody else aware of what this was about, because Tony Fauci is a forty-year career public servant who is now basically being prosecuted — or at least they’re trying to — for being a forty-year career public servant and doing incredible research, funding research all over the world that has saved millions of lives.

VINCENT: Probably worth pointing out that there are 1,600 people at this meeting. And if you ask them, probably all of them would agree that this pandemic originated in nature.

ANGIE: Yes.

VINCENT: So it’s not just us that’s saying this.

ANGIE: No. And this is really a good point, because Vincent also has a podcast. He does a lot of media work and he talks to a lot of other people all about virology. And he talks to a lot of virologists — probably even more virologists than I talk to on a regular basis, even though we’re both professional virologists.

VINCENT: I would have to say that I’ve met very few people who disagree. At least who don’t feel — they may not be certain, but they don’t feel that the lab is very plausible in most cases.

“Certainty is hard in science”

VINCENT: Certainty is hard in science, right? All you can do is say, all the data we have, all the evidence points to this. You can never say yes or no for sure. And a lot of people don’t like that, right?

ANGIE: Yeah. Uncertainty came up at the hearing quite a lot. They’re really doing a lot of work to litigate emails and things that Fauci sent very early on. And I think this is something that’s really important to mention about the hearing too: a lot of the so-called evidence against Fauci and against some of our other colleagues and friends is really just people talking to each other over email and trying to grapple with that uncertainty.

I know you, Vincent, because you trained me. One of the first things I learned from you was that when I’m dealing with a scientific problem, I shouldn’t decide the hypothesis before I’ve tested it. I shouldn’t declare that something is true if I don’t know that it’s true and I don’t have evidence to demonstrate that it’s true.

VINCENT: So a great example is RFK Jr. saying, I’m going to look for evidence that vaccines cause problems. That’s not how science works. What you say is, let’s look at the record of vaccines and see what we find.

VAERS: “It just tells you maybe there’s something”

ANGIE: Exactly. So that came up a lot too today: vaccine safety. Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, who is a big-time anti-vaccine activist, said about what he called the experimental gene therapy shots, that there are all these vaccine safety signals in a database called VAERS that is operated by the CDC — which, by the way, Tony Fauci was not part of the CDC. But he claims that Tony Fauci ignored a lot of safety signals about the mRNA vaccines that had been submitted to VAERS.

Now, VAERS is a self-reported database. It’s not verifiable. And I think a lot of this is that people don’t really understand that scientists, as you said, will look at the entire body of evidence before deciding something. So if you do get a signal in VAERS — and I know about this because I’m also the co-editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine — you get a safety signal in VAERS, the CDC and their experts and experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will do a deep dive to see if there’s anything to that. And they will do that by, as you said, looking at the data in an objective and unbiased way to see if the numbers actually add up to what people are seeing.

VINCENT: And of course, there have been signals in VAERS. So the rotavirus vaccine many years ago generated a signal, which led to it being —

ANGIE: That’s right.

VINCENT: — and fixed. But there are a lot of things there that just don’t mean anything. So you could get a COVID vaccine and a month later die. It doesn’t mean they’re connected.

ANGIE: Correct.

VINCENT: But if there are enough of those, you investigate them. And in fact, the CDC does that, and then they don’t come up with anything. Right? So people are misled about the VAERS database and its usefulness. It just tells you maybe there’s something and we need to investigate it. But on its own it’s not meaningful.

“Anything can be a gain of function if it gains function”

ANGIE: It’s not meaningful, and it also has nothing to do with the origins of the pandemic — and neither do the vaccines. This is another thing that just really drives me crazy.

The big accusation scientifically against Fauci and the WIV, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is that they were doing what is called gain-of-function research — or in other words, juicing up viruses so that they’re more transmissible or pathogenic in people. And the standard at the time was that it has to be in people.

VINCENT: Anything can be a gain of function if it gains function. You can put green fluorescent protein into a bacteria and it turns green, and now that’s a gain of function.

ANGIE: But the gain-of-function research that they’re talking about here is so-called dangerous gain-of-function research, which is virology research that changes things. So they said that they took a bat coronavirus, stuck in a spike from another bat coronavirus. The backbone was — Rand Paul said it was SARS. It was a SARS-like coronavirus. They actually had two, called WIV1 and SHC014, that they used for cloning viruses.

And one reason I was really excited to talk to Vincent about this, of course, is that Vincent is very famous for cloning viruses and was in fact the first person to develop an infectious clone of a virus, in 1981. So when people say that, oh, we can’t have these secrets of these viruses and these chimeric viruses, they’re so bad getting out — this is work that’s actually been going on for almost fifty years that you pioneered.

VINCENT: It’s been going on forever. Nobody paid any attention to it until the pandemic came along. And then suddenly politicians who really don’t know anything about science started to comment on it. This idea that the virus was made somewhere is just crazy absurd. It doesn’t make any sense, because if you were going to make SARS-CoV-2, you’d have to have something really close to it to start with. And as far as we know, nobody had anything. So everything about engineering falls apart right away.

ANGIE: It sure does. Same thing with serial passage. So the other theory that Rand Paul talked about today is that it was — and they’re never really clear about everything that’s going on. They’re never clear if it was cloned or engineered or serially passaged. They talk about them like they’re all the same thing.

Serial passage is when you take advantage of the fact that the enzymes that replicate the virus genomes are mistake-prone, and so they put in a lot of mutations. So if you add selection pressures to make a virus do something that you want it to do, like say grow in a mouse, you serially passage it through the mouse and eventually it will grow in mice better. That was my PhD project, by the way. I was only somewhat successful.

However, often when you serially passage it, then you might clone it. You might make chimeric viruses, as they were discussing. There’s all kinds of things that you can do.

But what I wanted to talk to you about, Vincent, too — this is something I think about all the time. There’s this assumption that because you’re doing these things with viruses, that your motivations are inherently bad or malicious, that you are doing this recklessly at the very least, or that this is something that we’re just kind of doing for kicks. Like, oh, you made a bad virus. I’m going to make one that’s worse.

And that’s absolutely not what any of this work has historically ever been for. The purpose of all of this work has been to develop new vaccines, to develop new antiviral drugs, to figure out how vaccines work. I don’t recall you ever once in all of my cloning conversations with you being like, what would be cool is if we made a rhinovirus that was like bird flu. Not that I think you could actually even do that.

VINCENT: We don’t do that. Virologists and scientists in general don’t do that. We are driven by curiosity to solve problems. And in doing so, maybe we help human health, right? We don’t want to impair human health. That’s absurd. And for anyone to accuse a scientist of doing that just doesn’t know how science works. I’ve never met anyone — I’ve been in virology for years, I never met anyone who wanted to do an experiment for nefarious purposes.

ANGIE: No.

VINCENT: And so these politicians would like you to think that that’s what we do all the time. But it’s not true. It’s never true.

“Safety is the top priority”

ANGIE: One thing, training people in the containment lab that I work in — when Vincent trained me to do experimental virology, safety is the top priority. We’re not planning, first of all, pointless experiments. But second of all, if you’re a virologist and you’re doing something with a dangerous virus, who do you think is going to be the first person to get infected if you screw that up?

VINCENT: You.

ANGIE: Probably you.

VINCENT: Yep. It’s called spitting into the wind, right?

ANGIE: Yeah. None of us wanted to do that. So we take various precautions. Like in Vincent’s lab at the time, you could still work with poliovirus at BSL-2. All of us have been vaccinated against poliovirus, so there was no danger of us getting poliovirus, so you could use it in those lower containment conditions. Now polio requires higher containment conditions and can only be used in specialized places because of the efforts to eradicate polio, which I fully support. And in fact, that was why I worked on rhinovirus in graduate school, because we thought we were going to have to destroy all of those old polio stocks.

I love polio. It’s a beautiful virus to work with. I bet Vincent loves it even more.

VINCENT: I do. It’s on my phone.

ANGIE: But yeah, it’s on his phone. He’s going to get a tattoo of it.

VINCENT: But we made a transgenic mouse that could be infected with polio. That’s a gain of function for the mouse, way back in the nineties.

ANGIE: Transgenic mice came up too today. They were humanized mice, as they like to call them.

VINCENT: Well, they’re not really humanized, because they just have one gene. Expressing the receptor is not making a mouse a human. But when we did it, the university said we should contain these mice. Maybe they’ll get out and be a new place for polio to grow in. And so people were thinking about this. And so we bred and kept these mice in containers where they couldn’t get out.

ANGIE: Yeah. So we don’t just do things willy-nilly. And in fact, you’ll be happy to know that your graduate student who trained me to work with the PVR transgenic mice — the first thing he told me was, we cannot let these mice get out because they could create a reservoir for polio in the natural world.

VINCENT: We’ve always done everything, I think, responsibly.

ANGIE: Most scientists are not trying to waste time and resources doing pointless experiments to begin with, but we’re also not trying to do unethical or dangerous experiments. We’re not trying to put ourselves in danger. We’re not trying to put our communities in danger, as you said. We’re curious. We’re trying to find out truths about the natural world. We’re trying to find out things that will help humanity, that will help our world be a better place.

And essentially what the Republicans and Rand Paul said today was that that’s not what any of us are doing. We’re all out to, I don’t know, damage people, to do research that’s going to hurt people.

“You want to talk about profiteering”

ANGIE: They’re never actually quite clear on what our motivations are. I mean, today they did go off on how Fauci has gotten a lot of cash awards and how he had people at NIH, quote, soliciting those awards, although —

VINCENT: People at very high levels like Tony Fauci will get these awards and there’s a huge process to get it. And if it comes with a $900,000 prize —

ANGIE: I’ve never gotten an award like that, by the way. I would imagine that you would need staff working on it. And to make Tony Fauci sound as though he’s been a profiteer for his entire career is also just a complete travesty, because Tony Fauci has literally spent trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer dollars funding research that has brought us to the point where we’ve cured so many diseases, we’ve developed so many vaccines, we’ve done all of this incredible work for fifty years.

And coming to this conference — even hearing from Vincent about the talks that I missed, and the good science, the amazing science that I missed, in this climate — is really what we should be talking about. Not all this made-up stuff.

VINCENT: I don’t think any Republican should talk about profiteering. They’re profiteering from the government right now.

ANGIE: Oh, I mean, Ron Johnson was talking about how — so there were so many complaints brought up by the Republicans. And I do want to give a shout out to the Democrats, though, because every single Democrat who was at that hearing — and they all showed up — came back at the Republicans with the questions that they had for Fauci. None of them were really questions. They were more speeches. But they called it out for what it was: effectively a show trial, and an attempt to convince Americans that science is bad, and that many of the things that have made Americans’ lives markedly better are bad and we shouldn’t fund them anymore. And in fact, we should criminally prosecute them if they are going to be politically opposed to the current administration — which is entirely different from any climate I think that we’ve ever been in in the U.S.

VINCENT: I’m sure they presented the data for these assertions, right?

ANGIE: Yeah, so Ron Johnson did bring up some VAERS data, a chart that I found the numbers on it. I would want to check them, that’s for sure. Wasn’t very well cited about how he did that analysis.

He did not provide anything to support his claims that Fauci helped cover up hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which are, according to him, very, very effective, much more so than vaccines for treating COVID. And millions of people died — except more than a million people did die from COVID. But in addition to that, I guess, Ron Johnson is claiming that more millions died because they didn’t get ivermectin or something. And that’s somehow Fauci’s fault.

And ivermectin, by the way, doesn’t work.

VINCENT: It doesn’t work.

ANGIE: And also, does hydroxychloroquine work?

Ron Johnson is part of a larger group of anti-vaxxers led by Peter McCullough, who sells telemedicine services that will prescribe you ivermectin for $600 — which is a considerable markup considering ivermectin is a generic drug. So you want to talk about profiteering. You don’t have to go very far in terms of degrees of separation to connect Ron Johnson, and probably Rand Paul too, to some of these anti-vax organizations.

VINCENT: The big problem is that because these are senators making these statements, many Americans believe what they’re saying is correct, right?

ANGIE: That’s absolutely right. And the Senate and Congress these days have become a forum in many ways for really just promoting some of these crazier conspiracy theories. The MK-Ultra hearing that I watched a couple of weeks ago about CIA mind control was completely unhinged. And I just could not believe that this was a discussion that was happening in Congress. Saying stuff like the CIA had MK-Ultra’d the Charlie Kirk shooter, and all of this stuff. It’s just deep state nonsense.

But the purpose is beyond silliness. The purpose is really to degrade our democratic institutions and to create precedents for much worse things, I think. And in Fauci’s case, I’m just very, very worried that he will set a precedent that will allow them to go after whatever political dissidents they don’t like, including many, many of our colleagues.

“Scientific inquisitions”

VINCENT: Yeah, I think everyone needs to be very careful about these scientific inquisitions, essentially, where there’s nothing behind them except accusations. And as you said before, they’re not even sure if it’s passage or engineering or whatever, because they don’t know.

ANGIE: Yeah, and they don’t even bother to read the literature which would say otherwise.

VINCENT: So I don’t think politicians asking about science is really a reliable forum to get the truth out.

ANGIE: No. And it shouldn’t be. And in the past — and maybe Vincent, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with committees at NIH or policy stuff in the past. I don’t know that we’ve actually talked about that very much. I know that Tony Fauci and you are very familiar with NIH and all that.

But I just think a lot about how many of these mechanisms that they’re going at are really obscure. Most of the public isn’t paying attention to NIH sub-awards and sub-award rules. And they certainly aren’t paying attention to the latest in bat coronavirology. And so when you get all this stuff that comes up in a Senate hearing like this by somebody like Rand Paul, who is a doctor — he’s made up his own board to certify himself, but he isn’t, he is technically a board-certified ophthalmologist — saying things as a physician, coming at this with the authority of a physician and a senator, saying: we know that it was a lab leak. We know that there were these chimeric viruses being made. We know there was this furin cleavage site. We know that there was serial passage and there was all this stuff.

And the average person, who has never heard of what a furin cleavage site is, who is not getting people on Twitter tweeting the sequence of the furin cleavage site at them — which is something that’s happened to me now twice — most people don’t think about that kind of stuff. And so they don’t know what to think. And so what they hear is, this sounds sciencey, it sounds like a lab leak, and you know what, he’s an elected senator, they’re saying this in the Senate, Tony Fauci is under oath, he took the Fifth. That suggests that he’s guilty.

And they certainly like to talk about that, too. They made a big deal — Rand Paul loved to talk about how he brought half a dozen lawyers with him, and kicked out his lawyer who was objecting to the process, kicked him out and then said, don’t worry, you’ve got the rest of your half dozen lawyers with you. Why wouldn’t he have lawyers? I would certainly have as many lawyers as I could if I thought the government was trying to prosecute me for doing my job.

VINCENT: But I think we should talk about why they’re doing this. They want to get him to say something, which later they will say he was lying.

ANGIE: Right. That’s right. So at the very beginning of the hearing, Rand Paul asked Fauci to open up a copy of the U.S. code and read the statute on perjury, which then Rand Paul read for him, reminded him that he was under oath repeatedly.

And for me, I think what this is all about — much like the MK-Ultra hearing was meant to sort of mobilize anger against the government, against our standard democratic procedures — the purpose of this is really to set the precedent for prosecuting political dissidents. And by making it seem as though Tony Fauci is guilty whether he opens his mouth or not, that’s a good way for them to further undermine trust in Tony Fauci.

But the fact is, I think the fact that he took the Fifth was the smartest thing he could have done, because no matter what he says at this thing — Rand Paul started off by asking him if he wanted to apologize to the American people for lying to them. And so obviously he did not do that. And I don’t think he owes us any kind of apology. But whatever he would have said — if he would have said the scientific evidence doesn’t support that it was a lab leak, they would have said that he was lying, because Rand Paul is convinced that it’s a lab leak and has all this fake evidence that they just made up that says that it is.

The furin cleavage site

VINCENT: So what kinds of scientific questions did he ask him?

ANGIE: Well, he asked him about the furin cleavage site — which of course, again, Tony Fauci didn’t answer any of this, because back in 2021 Tony Fauci did actually answer some of these things.

And the fact is, the furin cleavage site is an element in the spike protein where a pair of molecular scissors, effectively called furin, comes along and snips the protein in half. In other sarbecoviruses — which is what Rand Paul called them today, although he called them “sar-bee-coviruses,” I think.

VINCENT: Okay, we’ll give him that.

ANGIE: Yeah, that’s okay. So there’s SARS-related betacoronaviruses, which is just a classification of these viruses, which includes SARS-CoV-2, right?

VINCENT: That’s correct. Yes. So betacoronaviruses include SARS-related coronaviruses, MERS-related coronaviruses.

ANGIE: And so that’s what he was talking about. So no other SARS-related coronavirus has ever been found with a furin cleavage site in it. However, MERS has multiple furin cleavage sites in the spike protein. In other SARS-related coronaviruses, other proteases, other molecular scissors will come along and make this cleavage. But the cleavage has to happen.

Many, many other viruses have evolved to have furin cleavage sites. High-path influenza, Ebola. What am I forgetting? You probably know them all.

VINCENT: I like the high-path influenza. That’s a great example of a furin cleavage site. And many other viruses do also.

ANGIE: And the high-path flu is actually very interesting with the furin cleavage site, because it is the acquisition — the natural acquisition — of a furin cleavage site that makes it go from low-path avian flu to high-path.

VINCENT: This is a good example. So in nature, we’ve seen low pathogenicity, which means they don’t cause a lot of disease in chickens, go from low to high by acquisition of a furin cleavage site. No one has ever accused anyone of putting it there for avian influenza. Why not?

ANGIE: They sort of have.

VINCENT: Oh, they have. Yeah. Who did it?

ANGIE: Peter McCullough. That anti-vaxxer, the profiteer that Ron Johnson works with. He wrote a paper called like the proximal origin of H5N1. And it suggests — this is an even crazier story. Sorry about the sidebar, guys, but this is how crazy this stuff is getting.

This guy wrote this paper that suggested that H5N1 is a lab leak, but from two labs: a USDA lab in Georgia, I think, and then a lab in — I want to say Ukraine.

Ukraine, biolabs, and what those labs actually did

ANGIE: Which actually is kind of relevant to this, because some of the evidence against Fauci are these documents about biolabs that were run in other countries, including Ukraine, by the Department of Defense. And the reason for this was — this program started decades ago to build international relationships with other countries, and especially former Soviet countries like Ukraine that might partner up with other people that are not so friendly to us if we don’t make friends with them first.

So we funded these labs where we could work with them and where we could support them in doing important work, like, for example, what Tulsi was all upset about, which was H5N1 avian influenza surveillance work in Ukraine, which was standard genomic sequencing and sampling. It was not any kind of gain of function, anything. And yet it’s being painted as some kind of gain-of-function work, when in reality this is really important for food safety and food security. Ukraine is the world’s sixth largest poultry producer. So it makes sense that the U.S. would invest money in avian flu control in Ukraine.

VINCENT: So we’re just trying to do things to protect human health and we get accused of nefarious things.

ANGIE: That’s right. And in the course of doing that, we’re also safeguarding American interests and national security, which I think is something that people also don’t talk about enough. Our community doesn’t always talk about that, except in the sense of what kind of grants we might be able to get, or biodefense grants.

But I think that people really do need to understand that this whole entire thing is designed to make good things that America used to do — like building multilateral relationships and making the world a safer place and doing important, high-impact research to save lives — making it seem like it was a waste of time or fraudulent or even malicious.

VINCENT: It’s very easy to be swayed if you listen to the senators throwing out all these terms, even though they don’t make any sense and there’s no continuity. The person on the street would say, yeah, this is really bad, we shouldn’t let this happen. But it’s not the senators you should listen to. You should be listening to the scientists who are doing the work and are doing it to protect you.

I mean, so this idea about this cleavage site — just the fact that it’s not present in the related viruses means nothing. In biology, that’s how things are. Some things are present and sometimes they’re not.

ANGIE: Right.

VINCENT: And so to accuse someone of putting it there is crazy.

ANGIE: So I was talking to a couple of our colleagues today — and I missed this talk, too, I don’t know if you saw it — but one of our colleagues had been doing a lot of deep sequencing, like really, really deep sequencing of bat samples, and found furin cleavage sites that basically you could see at a very, very low frequency. There are viruses emerging that have some, at least a furin motif.

VINCENT: Yeah, these were not in bats, they were in cells in culture.

ANGIE: Okay.

VINCENT: If you just grow the virus under certain conditions, you can see the generation of novel — these viruses do a lot of rearranging of their genome. And so it’s very likely that this happened in nature and that gave rise to this.

ANGIE: That’s incredible work.

VINCENT: It was very simple. And when you look at the science, you get answers. This is why this whole hearing is nonsense, because they don’t provide any evidence, just accusations.

The diaries: “It’s pseudo evidence”

ANGIE: The problem is they do provide evidence, but it’s not really evidence. It’s pseudo evidence. They provide this Tony Fauci’s diary kind of thing, where making it seem like it’s a crime to be impressed by the fact that you met celebrities.

I don’t know how I’d feel if I were Tony Fauci going through the pandemic and having people make candles about me and bobblehead dolls, and all kinds of St. Fauci and the Fauci ouchie and merchandise and stuff. I think it would be really weird to be in that situation. And I don’t think that there’s anything in Tony Fauci’s diaries that suggests wrongdoing or that suggests that he had some sort of secret nefarious plan. I also think that Tony Fauci is smart enough that if he did have a secret nefarious plan, he probably wouldn’t have written it out on his government laptop.

VINCENT: People do all kinds of things that are unrelated to their work. And you can, sure, you can dig all this out, and it doesn’t look good that you got awards, that you liked celebrities — but that’s not really relevant to the main question.

ANGIE: No.

VINCENT: Right? And he had nothing to do with the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID. There’s zero evidence that points to it. Yet you can cloud the issue by pulling in all this other stuff, which to some people is a little bit shady — isn’t he, because he took this money and so forth. But it’s not correct.

“Why would an honest person need to take the Fifth?”

ANGIE: Well, that’s what they started with at the very beginning. As soon as he pleaded the Fifth, it was like, why would you plead the Fifth if you haven’t done anything wrong? But he pled the Fifth for the same reason that he got the pardon — which Josh Hawley pointed out, Republican from Missouri, who made a big point to support the January 6 traitors, I should add.

Josh Hawley kept saying, why would an honest person need to take the Fifth? Why would you take the Fifth if you haven’t done anything wrong? It’s illegal for you to take the Fifth because you’ve been fully pardoned with this illegal pardon that Joe Biden gave you.

And I want to be really clear: the reason that Joe Biden pardoned Fauci in advance was not because he’d done anything wrong. The same reason he pardoned members of his family and members of the January 6 committee. It’s because he anticipated that this exact kind of political persecution would occur. And in fact, it has. So why else would Tony Fauci not take the Fifth, when he’s literally there so that they can entrap him with whatever he says?

VINCENT: Exactly. That’s the point. He took the Fifth because they would entrap him later. And there’s just no point in subjecting yourself to that.

ANGIE: And like I said, every single Democrat said that was the purpose. And I was really happy, because the Democrats have not always been covering themselves in glory in terms of their defense of science. Oftentimes, especially on this committee, Senator Peters has gone back and forth about how much he’s really stood up for scientists, I think. And I think some of that was that the Democrats just kind of didn’t want to make the scientific stuff an issue, because it’s very technical. And it really shouldn’t be a politically divisive issue. However, that’s what it is.

And Gary Peters in particular, the ranking member of the HSGAC, the Democratic minority leader of it, wrote a furious letter to Rand Paul a couple weeks ago when basically he found out that the Democrats were going to be excluded from this transcribed interview, before Rand Paul subpoenaed Fauci. And good for him. He talked about that today — how historically science has always been a bipartisan political pursuit and now it has become so divisive and weaponized. And it’s really one side weaponizing it against the other.

“Why is this work good?”

VINCENT: So what other science questions should we talk about?

ANGIE: So I think that one thing that was really important about this conversation that really isn’t discussed, because it’s kind of boring, I think, for the public — but I don’t know, what do you think is the most important thing about this research?

VINCENT: You know, I try to communicate why this research has benefits to people. And every gain-of-function experiment is different.

ANGIE: Most experiments, I should add, that virologists do are not even gain of function like what they’re talking about. Most of us are just doing various types of experiments with viruses, and sometimes they do result in a gain of function. But we’re designing those experiments usually to come up with something that will improve a vaccine.

For example — you want to talk about vaccine development. Sometimes you might not have a virus that grows well in the model system that you’re going to test your vaccine in. So you make a chimeric virus that has the antigen that you’re trying to target on a virus that’s already pathogenic, so you can conduct a challenge study that will allow you to tell if that vaccine works or not. That’s just one example of the type of research.

One thing I have a hard time communicating to people, I think, is just how important this type of research is — even looking at different bat coronaviruses, trying to understand the viral diversity in the world. And I know, Vincent, you’re probably the world’s best expert in communicating how wonderful virology is to people. What’s your response to that? How would you respond to that when it’s being presented in this context?

VINCENT: Yeah. Why is this work good? Well, look, in 2002 a virus emerged from bats and caused 8,000 infections globally. That was SARS, right? And that told us that bats can have viruses that can cause problems for humans. Then in 2020 we have a pandemic started from a virus that came originally from bats. So now we understand that this is a threat and we need to understand — in fact, between SARS and SARS-2, a lot of people were trying to understand what exactly is in bats and is it a threat.

Don’t you think we should know ahead of time what our enemies could be? And so that’s what the basis of this research is: to know what’s in bats, how dangerous it is to humans potentially. And to this day, we don’t have good answers. We need to do more work, but because of hearings like this, it’s being impeded. But it really is aimed at preventing pandemics that kill many, many millions of people. We as humans are brilliant. We have the capacity to do that. But you can’t do it in an atmosphere where everything you do is thought to be nefarious.

ANGIE: Yeah. And you can’t do it if they’re going to take away all of your funding and put you in jail. I mean, that’s the other thing. I just think about all of my other colleagues.

And this morning, one of our colleagues who has been targeted and dragged into all of this gave a keynote lecture, or a lecture in the plenary session. And so I had to miss his talk. Our colleague Ralph Baric, who’s probably one of the most exceptional coronavirologists in history, has done an incredible amount of work and contributed an incredible amount to the field.

One of the things that always kills me is that these guys are being accused of this. But the reason we were able to develop vaccines in ten months was because of work that Ralph and many of our other colleagues did to study SARS coronavirus 1 and to study MERS in the context of developing mRNA vaccines for those viruses. Because of that work, we already knew what antigen we should target for SARS coronavirus 2. We already knew that those vaccines were probably going to be safe and that they were going to be effective. We already knew how to — well, Jason McLellan already knew how to stabilize the pre-fusion spike protein. And so as soon as we got the sequence, vaccine development started that day.

And none of that work would have happened without the work that came before — again, from people who are being accused right now. So someone said this morning that Ralph probably contributed more to saving people during the pandemic than anyone. And here he is now being accused of helping create the virus, which is just as crazy as it sounds.

And they’ve never really explained how any of this works. It’s like it can’t be explained. Fauci funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with EcoHealth, and then somehow Ralph got his hands on it, and then somehow our other colleague Vincent Munster got his hands on it, and they were serially passaging it and gain-of-functioning, and Ralph supposedly inserted a furin cleavage site.

“We’ve never found a progenitor virus”

ANGIE: But you said it earlier, Vince, and I think one of the most important things to point out here is that we’ve never found a progenitor virus. We’ve never found the virus that became SARS coronavirus 2. Not in a bat and not in a freezer. We don’t know where it is.

VINCENT: Every lab leak idea fails on that. Every single one, because no one had anything close.

ANGIE: And then if you say that, do you know what their response is? Well, they lied about it. They had it, but they lied. And that is not science.

VINCENT: It’s not science. And you know what? What is science? If we found a progenitor virus in the freezer at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that’s it. I’m a lab leaker.

ANGIE: I, too, am a lab leaker if that happens, because that evidence overrides all of it. There’ll be a lot of other questions to figure out, I guess, if that ever happens. But that would be convincing to me.

VINCENT: Zhengli Shi, the head of the lab, sequenced everything in her freezer. She published it. There’s no evidence. Tested everybody for serology too. Anything close to SARS-CoV-2. And you could say she lied and she hid, but that is not evidence. You have to prove it.

ANGIE: Yeah. And you know what? I think that there’s actually quite poor evidence that she’s a liar, because — I have to say, I can’t think of anything that she said about her work that has been proved to be incorrect.

VINCENT: It’s correct.

ANGIE: I don’t think that we should not give people the benefit of the doubt just because they’re from China. And I think that she’s — I don’t know her well, but by all accounts, she’s a very good scientist. And she said that she sequenced all her viruses and she doesn’t have anything like SARS-CoV-2 there. She said that she serology tested everybody in her group and nobody had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. That to me suggests pretty strongly that if it was a lab leak, it didn’t come from her lab.

VINCENT: And if we want to get a little more detailed, right, the early cases were all around the market in Wuhan.

ANGIE: That’s right.

VINCENT: If it came in from the lab, they would be around the lab.

ANGIE: That’s right. And the cases around the market, I should add, that’s not like the hospitals that people went to. That’s where they lived. So when we wrote that paper, we extracted their place of residence, their addresses, and geolocated that around the market — well, just around Wuhan. And they happened to all fall around the market. So it wasn’t just like they all went to the hospital that’s next to the market because, I don’t know, that was the place to go or something. It wasn’t like the market was the big hot spot in Wuhan. There were many other places to shop and stuff.

VINCENT: It doesn’t sound — there’s wildlife trade, but it’s not like everybody’s going to pick up a raccoon dog on Friday night. It’s not necessarily the most popular place in Wuhan. So while it is a busy market, you’re not expecting to see the whole city going there.

ANGIE: So cases that occur in the immediate vicinity — including the cases that had no link whatsoever to the market and were even more statistically significantly associated with the market — all around the market and not around the lab, which is ten miles away on the other side of the Yangtze River, by the way. So none of the evidence really adds up.

The other thing is — and I always have trouble talking about this, Vincent, because some of the modeling that my evolutionary virology colleagues do is so sophisticated that it’s hard to explain it sometimes. But Jonathan Pekar’s paper, which was a companion to our paper showing the spatial relationship between those early cases, shows that essentially one lineage of the virus jumped into humans, and then a week later there was a separate independent spillover of the other lineage of the virus.

Now, not to get too deep into the weeds about all of that, but that means that there were two spillovers that happened a week apart. So if it was a lab leak, you have to have two independent lab leaks happening a week apart. And you also have to explain how they got from the lab to the market and only infected people around there.

VINCENT: Right. There’s no infections at the lab, which makes no sense if it’s coming from the lab.

“Molecularly impossible”

ANGIE: Right. So none of it stands up. It makes no sense. And that makes it even more incredulous that they’re blaming Tony Fauci and Ralph Baric for starting this when it’s impossible. Scientifically — what did you say before? Molecularly impossible? Tony Fauci said that. Molecularly impossible. I like that. It’s true.

He was talking about RaTG13. So the earliest virus that we knew of that was the most closely related — more closely related viruses have been found since then, but the earliest one to SARS-CoV-2 that first came out in 2020 that we knew of was called RaTG13. And over the course of its entire genome, it has more than 1,100 different nucleotide substitutions. And there is absolutely no reason why anybody, unless they really were a masochist or something, would want to just for no reason put a bunch of point mutations —

VINCENT: Well, they wouldn’t know what to change it to.

ANGIE: No, you wouldn’t know what to change it to. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not a precursor.

VINCENT: But the other thing that’s interesting is that they had this sequence, but they were never able to recover virus from that sequence.

ANGIE: That’s right. There was something wrong with it.

VINCENT: So to think it was a precursor fails on multiple levels.

ANGIE: And that’s just because if you look at this issue on the surface, you don’t get deep enough to understand why it doesn’t make any sense. So Rand Paul can say that Fauci facilitated it being made, but it doesn’t make any sense molecularly.

And this is the trouble — to explain this to people. And I am so grateful to all 917 of you who are watching us on Twitter and all the other platforms. I’m bad at checking all of these things all at once. But thank you all for joining us. I’m so glad that you’re hanging out here listening to us talk about science, because this is one of the hardest things to communicate about all of this. You get thirty seconds into the conversation and it sounds like science class to a lot of people and they just kind of check out. There’s a lot of other tire fires happening all around you. And so it’s hard to pay attention to stuff like Rand Paul going off about furin cleavage sites. On top of that, he doesn’t make any sense with what he’s saying. So there’s that problem, too.

But really — it seems ridiculous, but what bothers me about it is it really is so Orwellian. It is saying stuff that is not true and saying that that’s the truth. It’s revisionist history. It is ignoring things that are true to make things that are false true. It is essentially repeating lies over and over again until people believe them.

“It’s an icon of democracy they’re taking out”

VINCENT: So what’s the motivation of Rand Paul and his ilk? Why are they doing this?

ANGIE: So I think Rand Paul in particular hates Fauci and has a personal vendetta against him. But I think the larger reason that they’re all doing this, and why Rand Paul is clearly getting lots and lots of support from his colleagues to do this, is that again — if you set the precedent that you can take down a public servant of Fauci’s stature on nothing, on made-up charges, you could put anybody in prison.

And also, if you take down somebody like that, who is an icon of the American government, public service, then you are taking out essentially an icon of democracy. And that is what they’ve been doing throughout the government: eroding our trust in the Biden administration — but they don’t really mean the Biden administration. They mean democratic norms and processes and our Constitution.

And the fact that nearly all the Republicans today attacked Fauci for pleading the Fifth and asserting his Fifth Amendment constitutional rights — constitutional rights, asserting them is not evidence of guilt of anything. It’s evidence that you’re an American and you can assert your constitutional rights. I think that the whole purpose of this is to take that all apart, because they’re trying to replace it with the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.

“So what happens next in this fiasco?”

VINCENT: So what happens next in this fiasco?

ANGIE: That’s a very good question, and I honestly don’t know. Because I think there’s a possibility that — depending on how much traction this all gets and how I guess it all plays out with the public — they certainly will probably try to bring some of our other colleagues in in the meantime and try to get evidence from them. Probably starting with like Kristian Andersen, who is a colleague of mine, good friend of mine, and Vincent’s, who is an evolutionary virologist who first — I don’t know if he’s the first, but he first noticed that the sequence of SARS-2 back in January was kind of weird. And so he wrote to Tony Fauci and told him about his observations.

And Tony Fauci got this teleconference together of all these big, important virologists, our colleagues from all over the world who are experts in the field, to discuss whether or not it might be from a lab or not. And this is really one of the big issues in their argument: that, oh, some of them agreed, some of them didn’t. This was February 1, 2020. Some of them agreed that it might be from a lab and some of them weren’t sure and some of them disagreed. And there’s no consensus.

And then there were emails sent back and forth. And I think Francis Collins called China the Wild West in terms of lab regulation or something. And all these things that are just things that people said to each other in emails. They’re evidence of absolutely nothing. They’re evidence of friends joking around with each other, coworkers joking around with each other in most cases.

But basically, Kristian ended up going from this meeting and writing a paper that Fauci and other people on the call encouraged him to. They encouraged him and other colleagues who are also experts in viral evolution to look at this more carefully. And in the course of doing that over the next month and a half, they realized, you know, maybe this does look natural after all. They observed that there’s no other virus known that’s close enough to this, that there would be a backbone that you could clone anything into; the mutations compared to other SARS-related viruses are not consistent with serial passage in a lab. Like, it’s weird, but nature’s full of weird stuff.

And so that was basically the conclusion of this paper they wrote, which is called Proximal Origin — the Proximal Origin of SARS-Coronavirus-2. Sorry, I call it Proximal Origin for short.

But Proximal Origin came out, and now that’s being used as: Fauci conspired with Kristian to cover up the pandemic, because then Kristian received a large grant from NIAID, which he had been awarded before the pandemic started. So what people also need to understand is that NIH is not super fast moving. And when you apply for a multimillion dollar award that has multiple collaborator groups and multiple projects within it, you get that award, but you don’t get it for like six months. And so this had gone through the study section. It had been peer reviewed before the pandemic started. So that award was given before Kristian or Fauci or anybody even knew what SARS coronavirus 2 was. So it wasn’t a payoff.

But I think that’s exactly what they’re going to do. They’re going to accuse Kristian of conspiring with Fauci. They might expand the network too, Vincent. I mean, you and I could get dragged into that too. Somebody on Twitter the other day called us giant DGOF advocates. We’re dangerous gain-of-function research. We are the DGOF masters.

VINCENT: I see. Well, that paper, Proximal Origins, is just thought process on what might have happened, right? There’s no coercion. Tony Fauci didn’t convince anyone to write anything. Scientists don’t let anyone convince them of that, right? I mean, if you were co-authoring an article and your co-author said, no, you have to say this, you’d get rid of them, right?

ANGIE: And the five authors of Proximal Origins are all men, and good luck telling any of them what to do. They’re all smart people who know what they’re talking about.

“All I’m doing is asking. I want information.”

VINCENT: I remember early in the pandemic, I’d heard about this furin cleavage site. And like everyone else, I had no idea what it meant. And I didn’t know anything about it in the context of coronaviruses. And that’s the problem. You hear this and then, without putting it into context, you have some kind of reaction. So I actually wrote to Vincent Munster and asked him about this site and what it meant. And that email has been now discovered.

ANGIE: Oh, I’ve read it.

VINCENT: And people are now saying that I thought it was a lab leak in the beginning — which, all I’m doing is asking. I want information.

ANGIE: Yeah.

VINCENT: But that’s how these things are warped, right? Because you have a Rand Paul who has an agenda, so he will warp anything that anyone says.

ANGIE: No, and there’s a whole propaganda network effectively that does it, because I’ve also gotten a lot of stuff on Twitter about those emails that you sent to Vincent Munster. And it’s like, hey, Angie, look at what your mentor is saying to your friends, you know, kind of thing. It’s just really stupid. And it’s evidence of absolutely nothing. It’s evidence of scientists talking to each other and asking each other questions.

And that’s literally what we do. If I have a question about the coronaviruses, I would reach out to Vincent first. If I had a question about influenza, I would reach out to Alyson Kelvin or Florian or somebody who is an influenza expert. Even I work on influenza and I used to work on the coronaviruses, and I still would reach out to people who have greater expertise than me.

VINCENT: So Munster had started to work on the spike of SARS-CoV-2. So I thought — I had read a preprint of his and I thought this would be the person to ask. And so I asked. Of course, he never answered.

ANGIE: Smartly. Vincent was always bad at answering emails, though.

VINCENT: But he didn’t know. He wouldn’t have an answer. He would probably say it’s most likely natural origin, that they all are, and there’s no evidence otherwise. And eventually I came to that conclusion. Once you go into the literature and you read about furin cleavage sites, you realize that, of course, it’s natural.

ANGIE: Yeah, to me, just because it was weird — there’s another detail about it that’s way too technical, but if it was cloned, it was cloned very badly. I’ll put it that way.

VINCENT: Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Nobody would do that.

ANGIE: And that’s something that nature would do, because in my view, nature is the most dangerous gain-of-function virologist of them all, since nature doesn’t really care about being reckless, and nature is everywhere around us.

VINCENT: Oh, it does it all the time.

ANGIE: Does it all the time?

VINCENT: Yes. This is just an example of people jumping on this without any knowledge. And it’s illustrated by the scientists initially who didn’t have knowledge, and then when they got it, they realized that this was natural. And if people don’t have the ability to acquire that knowledge, so they’re okay with saying it must have been put there. But again, it all fails because you don’t have anything to put the furin cleavage site into.

ANGIE: No. Nothing. No progenitor virus, and there’s no lab leak. I mean, we can assume it took — how long did it take to find the SARS progenitor? Like —

VINCENT: Oh, twelve years. A long time.

ANGIE: Yes. Fifteen years. Something like that. A long time. So even — obviously there is a progenitor virus out there somewhere. If it’s flying around in a bat, then by the time we find it, it’s going to look like a different virus.

VINCENT: Totally different now, because it’s been continually evolving in the bats that it’s in.

ANGIE: So it’s going to be totally different. But if we ever find that virus, there are methods to trace it back and we can find it out.

The fact is, though, you’re absolutely right: no progenitor virus. No matter what the AI people say, we are not at the point where — you certainly weren’t, where you’re typing in sequences and just getting brand new viruses to work with. We’re not doing that type of thing. And why would anybody? Vincent and I know, and anybody who’s ever tried to clone anything, especially a virus, knows that it is not very easy to do many times.

“Cloning is challenging”

VINCENT: No. As you said before, we made the first DNA copy of an animal virus, poliovirus. Every time we changed something, it would lose infectivity. So the idea that you could just throw a site into it with no effect is crazy. In fact, people have thrown furin cleavage sites into other coronaviruses and usually it’s detrimental.

ANGIE: Yeah, usually it’s attenuating, or it kills the virus altogether.

And one thing I learned — Vincent’s PhD mentor one time made the mistake of telling me and my friend who was also in his lab that he had golden hands when it came to cloning. And I assuredly did not have golden hands. So it’s actually kind of nice to hear that Vincent had some trouble cloning, too. But this is really why I thought I didn’t have golden hands anyways, because I’m trying to clone this virus and things are getting kicked out of it — cloning is challenging. But any little change that would get made, you’re right, it would usually screw up my virus and I wouldn’t have any virus most of the time.

VINCENT: So the big idea that someone could design a virus in any way is laughable, if you have any knowledge of virology, really.

ANGIE: Or clone a coronavirus. Boy, I’m not sure that I could do that. Coronaviruses also, for other reasons, are very challenging to clone. So the idea that somebody’s just like, oh, I might try to whip that up.

VINCENT: So that’s what Ralph Baric was very good at.

ANGIE: Probably the best in the world. xAnd they’re saying that he gave that technology to Wuhan and they used it to make a virus, which is crazy. Also, they don’t seem to know very much about virologists, because while we do share our work freely, we’re not just like, oh, yes, we’re giving technology to adversarial nations just because.

VINCENT: Yes.

ANGIE: Most of us aren’t giving our best work to our competitors either, even if they are collaborators. So there’s that.

“If you have a scientific issue, the scientists should talk about it”

ANGIE: Wow, we’ve been recapping this for an hour. We’ve had a lot to talk about, but I think it’s really important. I’m really glad that we did this, Vincent.

VINCENT: Yeah. I think that if you have a scientific issue, the scientists should talk about it. It would be nice if Rand Paul could sit here and have a conversation with us, but he would never do it, because he would know that he would be wrong.

ANGIE: Yeah. And he doesn’t want to be shown wrong because he has an agenda, obviously. Gosh, next thing you know, if we did that, he’d probably have us in HSGAC, because his whole problem with Fauci seems to be the fact that Fauci told him he was full of it when he tried to explain to Fauci how the lab leak happened, incorrectly.

VINCENT: Yeah. Rand Paul knows nothing about science, folks. He may know a lot about eyes.

ANGIE: Yeah. I’m not sure he does, though.

VINCENT: He doesn’t know anything about viruses. And I don’t think you should hang on anything that he says about viruses, and particularly SARS-CoV-2. It’s very easy for you to be convinced. But just ask us and we’ll give you the answer. He’s wrong.

ANGIE: It’s true. And we have a lot of platforms that we’re going to continue telling you about all of this stuff on. Vincent is the media mogul of MicrobeTV. He hosts a podcast called This Week in Virology. So if you like all of that virology discussion that we just had, you should tune into TWiV, because there’s a lot more of it. And also these days I’m liking TWiV — not to say that I didn’t like it before, but I like that there’s so much more spicy discussion on TWiV.

VINCENT: Yeah, we feel our mission is to provide virology information to everybody. And so we take the data and discuss it. We don’t make stuff up. You can rely on us for giving you the truth. So if you like that, just go to microbe.tv and you can find it, and also a lot of other science podcasts as well.

ANGIE: And make sure you follow Vincent on Instagram and YouTube and all the platforms. And I’m going to get him on Substack too.

But I also would like to tell you that for science, as well as the spicier political opinions, you are more than welcome to continue coming to Rasmussen Retorts as well, and watch our show, Rasmussen Retorts, on MicrobeTV, in fact. And you can also find me with . They are a nonpartisan organization that says it’s not about left and right, but about wrong and right. And that’s why I’m involved as the science chair, and we are determined to keep our foot on the necks of the people who are going to use science to take apart our American democracy and to make the world a less safe, less healthy, less happy and less free place.

So with that, thanks so much for joining us. Please feel free to ask either one of us if you have any questions about the origins of the pandemic, about the lab leak, about any of this stuff. I’m at Rasmussen Retorts. I’m all over the social media world. You can find me easily. Thanks so much. And please join us again next time. Take care. And thank you, Vincent.

Related from Rasmussen Retorts

On the hearing and the show trials

• LIVE COVERAGE: Tony Fauci Faces Off With Rand Paul on Pandemic Origins

• Let the Show Trials Begin

• Virology Research is Not a Crime

On gain of function and pandemic origins

• I DGOF: Explaining Gain-of-Function Research

• Five Reasons Why It Still Wasn’t a Lab Leak

• Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci: Part 2—The “lab leak” obsession

Links from this episode

The hearing

• Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment in Rand Paul Senate hearing — NPR

• Fauci invokes 5th Amendment right during GOP-led hearing on COVID origins — PBS NewsHour

• Fauci, citing senator’s “unhinged obsession,” pleads the Fifth — STAT

• Fauci foils the GOP’s plans to use his private diaries against him

• Sen. Gary Peters’ June 9, 2026 letter to Chairman Rand Paul on HSGAC rules and precedent (PDF)

• Gary Peters blasts Rand Paul’s hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci — The Hill

• Biden offers preemptive pardons to Jan. 6 committee, Milley, Fauci — NPR

• 18 U.S.C. § 1621 — Perjury generally

Pandemic origins

• Worobey et al., The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Science (2022)

• Pekar et al., The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2, Science (2022)

• Andersen et al., The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, Nature Medicine (2020)

• Zhou et al., A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin (RaTG13), Nature (2020)

• Wu et al., SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered, PNAS (2022)

Virology cited in the conversation

• Racaniello & Baltimore, Cloned poliovirus complementary DNA is infectious in mammalian cells, Science (1981)

• Ren et al., Transgenic mice expressing a human poliovirus receptor: a new model for poliomyelitis, Cell (1990)

• Menachery et al., A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence (WIV1/SHC014), Nature Medicine (2015)

• Wrapp et al., Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation, Science (2020)

• Global Polio Eradication Initiative

Vaccine safety, ivermectin, and the anti-vax network

• VAERS — Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

• CDC: Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

• CDC: Rotavirus vaccine (RotaShield) and intussusception

• ACTIV-6: Study confirms no benefit to taking ivermectin for COVID-19 symptoms — Duke Clinical Research Institute

• McCullough et al., Proximal Origin of Epidemic Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 Clade 2.3.4.4b and Spread by Migratory Waterfowl

Ukraine biolabs

• Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci: Part 1

• DTRA Biological Threat Reduction Program

• Tulsi Gabbard’s not-so-shocking revelation of U.S.-funded veterinary biolabs in Ukraine — Reason

Where to find us

• MicrobeTV · This Week in Virology

• Rasmussen Retorts

• Save America Movement

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Sen. Rand Paul: Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May eleventh where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?

Dr. Anthony Fauci: Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function. Let me finish.

Paul: You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You’re saying that’s not gain of function?

Fauci: That is correct. And 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: Let’s read from the NIH definition of gain of function. This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How can you say that is not gain of function?

Fauci: It is not.

Paul: It’s a dance. And you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic.

Fauci: Well, now you’re getting into something. If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded as a subaward from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2 — that’s where you are getting. Let me finish.

Paul: We don’t know. We don’t know if it did come from the lab, but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab, and there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself.

Fauci: I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator. Because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible —

Paul: No one’s saying that it caused it.

Fauci: — that those viruses caused the pandemic.

Paul: What we’re alleging is the gain of function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded it. You’re not getting away from it. It meets your definition. And you are obfuscating the truth.

Fauci: I’m not obfuscating the truth. You are the one — I want everyone to understand that if you look at those viruses, and that’s judged by qualified virologists and evolutionary biologists, those viruses are molecularly impossible —

Paul: No one’s saying those viruses caused the pandemic. We’re saying they are gain of function viruses because they were animal viruses that became more transmissible in humans. And you funded it. And you don’t admit the truth.

Fauci: And you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that. And if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.

Hi, everybody. Good morning. I am Dr. Angela Rasmussen, science chair for the Save America Movement and a virologist. I am here today to go over the Tony Fauci hearing before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in the Senate. Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, a Republican, has subpoenaed Tony Fauci to appear at this, where he is going to confront him about a number of accusations that he’s made with regard to the origins of the SARS coronavirus 2 / COVID-19 pandemic.

Unfortunately, for the past six years, Tony Fauci and Rand Paul have been going at it about the so-called lab leak that actually did not happen. In July of 2021 — actually, in May of 2021 and then in July of 2021 — Tony Fauci did appear before the HSGAC to testify. And in July, the clip that I just showed was a confrontation that he got into with Rand Paul regarding the origins of the pandemic.

“The overwhelming body of scientific evidence does not support a lab leak”

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here. We have a serious issue in the sense that this hearing that is today is effectively a show trial. I want to be really clear about what the scientific evidence is about the origins of the pandemic. And I’ve written a number of articles about this that you can go on my Substack and read. I’ve just written two articles for Zeteo about this. Those articles are there too, and I’ll provide all the links in the transcript for this live when it’s over. But the overwhelming body of scientific evidence does not support a lab leak.

And I’m just going to go over that very, very quickly. What we do know about the origins of the pandemic is that all of the early cases were — we, my colleagues and I, actually applied some statistics to this. We found where those early cases lived, and we found that they clustered entirely around the Huanan Seafood Market, which is on the north side of the Yangtze River in Wuhan, which is a city of eleven million people and is quite large. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is what Rand Paul believes started the pandemic — that’s where he believes the lab leak originated from — is about ten miles to the south on the other side of the river, and it takes about a half hour to get back and forth between the two by train or by car.

So all of the early cases spatially lived around the market, not around the lab. And what we saw is that as time went by — we think that the virus probably emerged into the human population in late November, early December — as time went by, in January, we started to see increased numbers of hospitalizations all radiating outward from around the market, excess mortality that’s unexpected radiating outward from where the market is, not from where the lab is.

So we are seeing signs that there is a new epidemic starting: increased hospitalizations. And I should add that this was increased hospitalizations on top of an already peak flu season that had more flu cases than in the past ten years. And they’re still seeing excess hospitalization for influenza-like illness. They’re also seeing excess mortality, and it’s all radiating outward from where the market is, not from where the lab is.

And a lot of people have suggested that, well, the market was identified early on, so maybe it was a superspreader event. Maybe it was something that was picked up because a lot of cases happened at the market, but that’s not where it started. And so we looked at just the cases that had never been to the market. They had no link to the market whatsoever. And we found out that when we looked at just those cases, the statistical association was even stronger. So that’s a really good indication that the virus actually started spreading in humans from the market and not from the lab, because the lab is again ten miles away and we didn’t see the same cluster of cases around the lab that we saw around the market.

So when we looked in the market, we found there were environmental samples taken, and so we found that the environmental samples that contained genetic material from SARS coronavirus 2 were co-localized with the part of the market in which they sold live animals — and live wild animals in this case, including a number of species that were known to be infected with SARS coronavirus 1 when it emerged in 2002.

Now, SARS coronavirus 1 — the markets were not shut down. It was very clear that it came from the market, and there was actually transmission, multiple spillovers from animals that were being sold in the markets of Guangzhou and Foshan to humans. And there may have actually been some spillover back to the animals as well from infected humans. And this was all genetically traced. This was one of the really cool stories of sort of the advent of our molecular approaches to doing outbreak response — the SARS-1 outbreak, in which they were actually able to trace the exact genome sequences that went back and forth between people and animals in these markets.

So we know that it was from the markets in SARS-1. And many of these same animals were being sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We found DNA from those animals. And I have found in my lab — I haven’t had a chance to publish it yet just because this data is really tricky to work with and I want to make sure it’s right — but I have found signatures of RNA from the animals, which suggests that the animals were in fact infected, because they were expressing genes that are common to coronavirus infection. But I’m still working on it, so stay tuned for that.

Anyways, we have a lot of other evidence too. We have the evidence, for example — a lot of people have suggested that maybe SARS-2 was spreading cryptically because there was a lab leak way before late November or December. Maybe there was SARS-2 around this whole time and it’s just an artifact that we’re noticing it at the market. That doesn’t seem to be true either, because they did blood bank tests of normal blood samples, people who just donated blood, and they didn’t find antibodies to SARS coronavirus 2 until January coming up in Wuhan, which suggests that nobody was infected at population scale in Wuhan until January, because that was when it was detected in population-level samples.

So that’s the actual evidence. The only evidence to date that it could have come from the lab — and I do want to mention this because we haven’t completely closed the book on the lab, I suppose, in the sense that we haven’t found the smoking raccoon dog or the smoking animal that may have transmitted SARS-2 to humans. And by the way, genetic evidence suggests — some of my colleagues did this work — that there were actually two spillovers of SARS-2 in the Huanan market. There were two lineages of the virus at the time. One lineage spilled over and then another lineage spilled over a week or two later. So there were two independent spillovers. And we actually know this not because of data that we’ve gotten from China, but by doing genetic evidence of all of the sequences of SARS coronavirus 2 — those two viruses gave rise to the SARS-2 pandemic. One of those lineages has become extinct. The other one is continuing to evolve. And it’s now, you know, the eighty millionth iteration of Omicron.

But that is, in fact, the evidence about where the pandemic came from.

“Let me just tell you very quickly what their version of events is”

So Rand Paul and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a bunch of documents that they are calling evidence that Tony Fauci covered up the pandemic. So let me just tell you very quickly before we begin, because we’re going to start to begin any minute now, what their version of events is.

Their version of events is that Tony Fauci funded a NIAID — that’s the institute at NIH that he was the director of — funded a NIAID subaward, which is when a person gets a grant or an institution gets a grant and then there’s a collaborator on that grant and they are issued what’s called a subaward so that they have the funds to carry out that work. NIAID issued a subaward to a grant that was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance to do some work on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

And some of that work involved finding bat coronaviruses in nature, because the bats that transmit these coronaviruses live in China. And Zhengli Shi, the doctor at Wuhan Institute of Virology who led this subaward, is famous and a very, very excellent scientist and is known for going out, finding new coronaviruses and characterizing them, partly to determine which of them are potentially a threat for other pandemics. And so one of the ways that you do this is when you find these viruses, you try to see if they can infect human cells. And so that’s what they did. And if they can infect human cells, then you also try to see if they might be able to cause disease. Now, they don’t infect humans. Nobody does that, as far as I know, and they shouldn’t. But they do use what are called transgenic mice. Now, these are mice that express the human receptor for the virus. And they did. And Rand Paul says it’s a gain of function.

And now the hearing is starting, so I’m going to shut up and bring this onboard.

Okay, so I just turned off the sound for this live stream on CSPAN because they haven’t quite started yet. But they are getting started. Anyways, I’ll just finish up very, very quickly what I was saying.

So Rand Paul has accused Tony Fauci of doing what’s called gain-of-function research. Now, gain-of-function research means juicing up viruses to see if they are more pathogenic or more transmissible in humans. And it’s really important for people to understand that at the time that we are talking about here, the timeframe in question, the standard was that for gain-of-function research. It was not any of the many other definitions of gain-of-function research that we’ve heard of, including the one that Rand Paul gives, which is modifying viruses so that they can infect another species, modifying viruses so that they have expanded host range, modifying viruses so that they can produce more virus in cell culture — which he claims makes them more transmissible, but that’s absolutely not true. Having more virus in a petri dish does not mean that it has more capability to transmit from one person to another by the respiratory route.

And now Rand calls up, so I’m going to quiet down.

Chairman Rand Paul’s opening statement

Sen. Rand Paul (Chairman): The virus originated in the lab. The American people deserve answers. The American people deserve to know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a totalitarian country, in a lab that lacked acceptable safety standards. The decision to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, will likely go down in history as perhaps one of the worst public health decisions. Frankly, the American people deserve an apology. I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a man-made epidemic never happens again.

This is disgusting. He’s asking Tony Fauci to take the loyalty oath or face prosecution.

Paul: Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility. Regarding the lockdowns, you argue that you did not personally issue every lockdown order, close every school, or impose every mandate — and he may have recommended them. But officials across the country invoked your authority to justify these decisions. And you presented your recommendations not as judgments open to debate, but as dictates of science itself. Your own words demonstrate that you understood the influence you exercised. On March fourteenth, 2020, you wrote that the task force recommendations were driven by me, yourself, Deb and CDC. The next day you wrote that you had convinced Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the New York City schools. So you were involved. That same night, Governor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff told you that the governor had decided to close California schools, bars, and restaurants after watching you on television. Presidents, governors, mayors, school boards, corporations, and Congress all bear responsibility for the decisions they made. The COVID lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime. Children lost years of education. Small businesses built over a lifetime disappeared. Patients delayed cancer screenings and other medical care. Families were separated from dying relatives. Workers were ordered to accept a medical procedure or lose their jobs. Worship, assembly, employment, education, and travel were restricted in the name of science. While you did not impose every restriction, you used your public authority to justify them. While you concluded publicly that COVID occurred naturally, your private record tells a different story.

That’s not what his private record says. His private record consistently shows him, after the initial inquiry into whether or not it was synthetic — the private records show consistently that Tony Fauci thinks that the burden of evidence lies —

Paul: Your concern was not merely theoretical. That same week, you led an urgent effort to determine whether your own agency had funded the research related to these experiments that were now under suspicion.

And isn’t that what you would do if that accusation had been made? You would look into it and investigate it.

Paul: Hours later, your assistant reported that the Wuhan experiments had indeed been reviewed and approved by the NIH.

They had, because they weren’t gain of function according to the way the NIH regulated that research at the time.

Paul: Those were not the actions of officials who believed that lab-related origin was an absurd conspiracy theory. They were the actions of officials urgently trying to determine whether their agency funding was connected to the research under discussion, connected to the pandemic. You could not hide that your agency had funded the Wuhan research or your long history of defending gain-of-function research. The only alternative left was to argue that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab. You are not a detached observer. You had an institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest from the very beginning. The authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2“ privately had serious doubts about a natural origin. Within days, they flipped. And they all wrote in Proximal Origin that the virus was almost certainly not a laboratory construct.

It wasn’t a laboratory construct. And he’s talking about the Proximal Origin paper, which is a paper that several of my colleagues wrote, which they stated that after examining the evidence — this was very early on.

Paul: That paper was then used by the government and the media and you to discredit Americans who were asking the same questions that you and the authors were asking yourselves privately. But you didn’t disclose your role in the discussions that preceded the writing of the paper. You did not disclose the authors’ original concerns. You did not reveal that you’d been part of the paper, that you had read and offered editorial comments on the paper before it was published, before you began using it as evidence that it couldn’t have originated in the lab.

Okay, so what we do when we write papers is often we will run them by other colleagues and get their opinions on them. And then sometimes — in this case, given that it was about the origins of the pandemic and we’re talking about the NIAID director, who’s probably the country’s most prominent virologist — wouldn’t you ask that person for their input on your paper that is about the origins of the pandemic and yet has very little evidence to go on at the time? I would.

Paul: Some of the same scientists discussed avoiding email and carefully managing communications that might eventually be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The pattern is straightforward. Privately, there was alarm, then an immediate inquiry to see NIAID’s possible exposure to funding, then a rapid public declaration of certainty, continued private doubt, and then years of resistance to disclosure. The question is why? The only logical answer is that your primary concern was avoiding culpability.

Oh, that’s bullshit.

Paul: Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved the funding for this dangerous research. Your support of gain-of-function research is extensive and long-standing.

He never tried — in fact, research is not dangerous if done under appropriate biosafety conditions.

Paul: When he mutated the avian flu until it could spread through the air between mammals — this was the tipping point. This was when others became worried. You funded this. You advocated for this. The federal government’s own biosecurity board recommended withholding the details of these experiments because of the danger the research posed. People were concerned that publishing it was publishing a roadmap to creating bioweapons around the world.

Now, this is absurd. Nobody would use that as the roadmap to creating bioweapons, because these methods have literally been published for the last forty years, almost fifty years. In 1981, my Ph.D. advisor published a clone of poliovirus.

Paul: If a scientist became infected and triggered a pandemic — the benefits of the gain-of-function experiments outweighed the risks. In 2014, your agency, NIAID, began funding the Wuhan bat coronavirus work. In 2015, Ralph Baric and the Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli published NIAID-supported research combining a bat coronavirus spike protein with a SARS backbone.

This is called a chimeric virus. This is one way to assess whether or not a virus that has that spike protein could potentially enter and infect a human cell. It’s critical to this type of work with live viruses so that we can understand whether or not that virus in real life would actually infect a human cell and potentially cause a pandemic.

Paul: The DEFUSE proposal, which involved the insertion of a furin cleavage site into the coronavirus — DARPA rejected it as too dangerous. When COVID was sequenced, early on in January, within days scientists discovered that, lo and behold, it had a novel furin cleavage site just as had been proposed in the DEFUSE proposal. This is either an extraordinary coincidence or smoking-gun evidence that the Chinese had created COVID-19. It made the laboratory origin question more legitimate.

There are furin cleavage sites in many, many other beta coronaviruses.

Paul: On May eleventh, 2021, you told the Senate that the NIH has never, ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

But I’ll leave that to my colleagues — in a viral glycoprotein, however.

Paul: When I gave you the opportunity to correct the record, to reconsider the statement, you responded that you had never before lied. We were then told that only the government’s narrowest regulatory definition counted here, that you could define gain-of-function in one way in which this wasn’t gain-of-function, in which all of the common sense of the world would be thrown out. All of the idea that the mice were dying and the virus was more transmissible didn’t matter because you had a technical definition that allowed you to deny this. But the real question is, was it dangerous? Was it a wise decision to fund this? And you haven’t deviated from that. You’ve never admitted that it could have been a mistake funding this research in China.

Why would he admit that? He hasn’t done anything wrong.

Paul: They’re asking, does common sense say this research was dangerous in Wuhan? They wanted to know whether their money funded experiments in Wuhan that made bat coronaviruses better able to infect humans. The answer is yes. They wanted to know whether NIAID adequately supervised their work. The answer is no. When you defended this research, you described its benefits in the broadest terms. But when Congress demanded accountability, you hid behind the narrowest possible definition.

Oh, that’s bullshit. You can’t have it go this way. He hid behind the definition of how gain-of-function research is actually regulated.

Paul: It is a crime to destroy federal records. Yet our investigation reveals your assistant diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails. In 2024, you testified that you did not delete federal records. Who’s telling the truth?

Gain-of-function research is work that makes the viruses more transmissible and/or more pathogenic in humans, specifically — not in mice, not in cell culture. In humans.

Paul: The committee asked for your voluntary cooperation to come today. Your appearance had to be compelled by subpoena. You’re here today under duress.

Maybe he didn’t want to show up eagerly to your McCarthyist witch hunt, buddy.

Paul: President Biden issued you a sweeping pardon extending back to 2014. The same pardon he gave to his son, Hunter.

The same pardon he gave to the January 6th committee, I should add.

Paul: A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution. It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one. It does not prevent Congress from establishing what happened. There will be another pandemic. There will be another crisis. And there will again be officials who insist that uncertainty must be hidden for the public’s own good. They will demand obedience. They will invoke science — “I am the science” — as though it were a commandment.

Well, you’re not.

Paul: They will argue that government officials cannot be questioned because questioning them would undermine public trust.

I don’t think Tony Fauci ever once said that you could not question him.

Paul: It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust.

And I have met Tony Fauci. And when I met him, other than the fact that I was so nervous —

Paul: It is censorship that destroys trust. And it is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. That loss of trust may be your most damaging legacy. Trust can’t be ordered. It has to be earned. No scientist is above scrutiny. No government official is beyond accountability. And no public servant has the right to treat the suffering of millions of Americans as a footnote to his preferred version of history.

It’s not his preferred version of history that we’re talking about. He’s talking about the evidence. Your preferred version of history is this fiction that you’re portraying right now.

Ranking Member Gary Peters’ opening statement

Sen. Gary Peters (Ranking Member): The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has a long and a very proud history of conducting serious oversight on behalf of the American people. When this committee has been at its best, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to investigate complicated issues, to follow the facts wherever they may lead, and produce recommendations that actually strengthen our nation’s security and improve government functions. That bipartisan tradition has produced meaningful work following Hurricane Katrina, the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, failures at the Secret Service, and countless other matters. Unfortunately, today’s hearing is the latest step in the chairman’s sharp departure from that long tradition.

Indeed.

Peters: Indeed, this hearing appears to be a culmination of months of biased and selective efforts by the majority under the guise of investigation to basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.

Indeed.

Peters: In 2021, the chairman has called for today’s witness to be fired, to be arrested. Accused him of leading coverups and conspiracies.

Yep.

Peters: He has even featured the witness prominently in fundraising emails.

Indeed.

Peters: And on the cover of his book. He has also called for the cancellation of the witness’s security detail, despite the fact the witness and his family have received numerous credible death threats. When I served as chairman, Senator Paul and I launched a bipartisan biosecurity investigation that included oversight of risky research and the origins of COVID-19, because we agreed that the committee’s work would be stronger if we did it in a bipartisan manner and just followed the facts. That was and continues to be an area of legitimate and certainly needed oversight. As chairman, Senator Paul has taken the opposite approach. He has abandoned longstanding practice by blocking minority participation in committee oversight actions and has chosen to selectively release committee records that the minority has never had any access to in order to support his agreed or wrong conclusions.

I thought it was supposed to be all about transparency.

Peters: The chairman has repeatedly withheld documents and evidence from members that are entitled to receive them —

Almost like he’s trying to create a narrative.

Peters: — disregarding longstanding Senate rules and committee precedent that have preserved the credibility of our oversight in this committee for decades. I have raised these concerns directly with the chairman, because it’s not just what we investigate that matters, but how we conduct that investigation, that also matters. One-sided investigations designed to validate predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people who sent us to actually uncover the truth and to solve problems. I wrote to the chairman requesting that he adhere to committee rules. But instead of addressing concerns that I raised, he removed part of the committee’s website from the public view. This move not only prevented the public from being able to view those lists of concerns, it adds serious questions about the desire for transparency and legitimate oversight of this matter.

It’s almost like this stuff is all made up for political reasons.

Peters: It’s not simply the chairman’s actions, but what we could be using this committee’s tried and true oversight responsibilities to accomplish. This committee has not held its annual threats hearing at all in this Congress. We have not held a budget hearing for the Department of Homeland Security. There are important hearings that we would have the opportunity to discuss as to how to strengthen our homeland security across the board. No hearings on those topics. Instead of focusing on the national security challenges that we are facing in our country right now —

I should add that infectious disease is a big one.

Peters: — revisiting questions this committee has already examined, including through bipartisan work that Senator Paul and I conducted together when I served as chairman of this committee. But rather than building on that work to strengthen our preparedness against future disasters, we are instead relitigating the past. COVID-19 exposed serious deficiencies in our nation’s public health infrastructure.

We know that. It sure did.

Peters: More than one million Americans lost their lives, and this committee should absolutely continue examining how we can better prepare our nation against future biological threats. Those are the kinds of forward-looking, life-saving questions that will help our nation be better prepared to protect the health and the safety of Americans when the next emergency occurs.

And you know what? That was what Tony Fauci’s job was, and that was why he funded this research.

Peters: At this precise moment, we should be strengthening our capabilities. The Trump administration seems to be doing everything in their power to actually weaken our capabilities. The administration has hollowed out the public health workforce, pushed out and cut funding for public health personnel, shrinking the CDC workforce by a quarter. Thousands of experienced scientists have left government service, and with them has gone critical institutional knowledge that cannot be easily replaced.

And actually the basic function of these agencies.

Peters: The administration, thanks to political operatives like Russell Vought, has slashed or illegally withheld funding for life-saving medicines and cutting-edge technologies that let us rapidly develop them during an emergency. They’re politicizing the federal grant-making process, proposing to subject all federal grants, including those for disaster relief, housing development, and cancer research, to the whims of political appointees, not nonpartisan experts. All of this has left the American people more vulnerable to infectious disease threats, and we are already tragically seeing the consequences. Staffing and funding cuts have slowed the federal, state, and local response to an ongoing outbreak of a foodborne parasite which has sickened thousands in my home state of Michigan as well as across the country. At the same time, the administration’s cuts to global health programs and international partnerships have greatly reduced our ability to contain dangerous diseases like Ebola before they spread to our shores. We should be examining whether our federal health agencies have the personnel and the resources they need to effectively prevent, detect, and respond to these threats. We should be asking how to strengthen our biodefense efforts to deter our adversaries and prevent biological attacks against our country, and how our government can better coordinate and communicate during public health emergencies. These are the kinds of forward-looking matters that are worthy of this committee’s time. Instead, we are here continuing the chairman’s yearlong focus. History tells us, unfortunately, another pandemic is all but inevitable. The question is whether Congress and this committee will work to better prepare our country, or continue looking backward while our public health infrastructure crumbles around us. Unfortunately, I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to further a purely partisan agenda and it will not make Americans safer.

It absolutely is meant to further a partisan agenda, and it absolutely will not make Americans safe, and it absolutely will be tremendously harmful to American democracy.

Paul: This is the most transparent investigation in the history of Congress. We actually created a website, and we put all of the information on the website. It continues to operate. The reason it hasn’t been accessed is no Democrat ever signed up for it.

Oh, give me a break.

Paul: Not one Democrat. We told them the access. They never asked for the access code. They haven’t been on the website because they have not cared about the investigation.

They didn’t get the access code? I mean, did you give it to them?

Paul: It’s the practice of this committee to swear in the witness. Dr. Fauci, please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Dr. Anthony Fauci, you’re recognized for five minutes for your opening statement.

Give it to him, Tony.

Dr. Fauci’s opening statement

Dr. Anthony Fauci: Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, members of the committee. I served at the NIH for over fifty-four years, thirty-eight of those as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight. In fact, I testified before and/or briefed Senate and House committees well over two hundred times over those thirty-eight years. During and after the COVID pandemic, I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, and sat for several days-long transcribed sworn interviews, answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing. However, given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.

Chairman Paul’s questioning

Paul: We will now begin a round of questioning. Dr. Fauci, your testimony today is compelled —

Well, this is going to be fast.

Paul: As you know, it’s a crime under 18 U.S.C. section 1001 to knowingly make a material false statement to Congress.

Because I want to see what kind of dumb questions they were going to try to get answers to.

Paul: Understanding that you are under oath — the American people would like to understand your reasoning, your rationale for why you chose to fund the research in Wuhan. There have been intelligence agencies, the CIA, the FBI, the DOE, have all come to the conclusion that more likely than not, the virus came from the lab in Wuhan.

No, they didn’t. They came to that conclusion with moderate confidence at best at the FBI. And I’m glad Tony’s not going to answer this, because he didn’t make a decision to fund this research, not directly. Tony Fauci, as an individual, does not approve every single NIH subaward.

Paul: Are you sorry?

What kind of investigation starts off with “are you sorry”?

Paul: Can you explain to the committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Good for you, Tony.

Paul: In the red folder on your table is a copy of section 192 of Title 2 of the U.S. Code.

Oh, it’s like being on Oprah, except instead of getting a new car, he gets a copy of, like, the laws that he supposedly violated.

Paul: That section makes it a crime for a witness to appear under subpoena to refuse to answer any questions pertinent to the question under inquiry. Do you have that in front of you?

Yeah, it’s called the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, buddy. He doesn’t have to answer.

Paul: Let the record reflect that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right.

Oh, come on.

Paul: It is true that you’re appearing under direction of our subpoena to provide testimony on matters under consideration by the committee, including the origins of COVID-19, risky life sciences research, and your tenure as a federal government employee. Additionally, you’ve been provided a full and unconditional pardon dated January nineteenth, 2025 for any offenses against the United States which may have been committed or taken part from January first, 2014 to the date of the pardon, for a ten-year period.

So see, that’s the point. The dates of the pardon. They’re going to try to get him for perjury right now. So it was very smart of these lawyers to advise him not to answer. Because they’re saying that we’ve decided that it was a lab leak. Anything you say that’s actually true — because it wasn’t a lab leak — is now perjury. And it’s after the dates of the pardon.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Paul: Based on the facts presented, I’m going to direct you to answer the questions. The committee has issued a valid subpoena. They have requested your presence here. The questions are very pertinent to your decision-making as head of NIAID.

He’s not going to answer them, Rand, no matter how many times you tell him that he’s supposed to.

Paul: Do you still refuse to answer the questions?

Fauci: Yes. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Because these are constitutional rights. You know, I’m really glad that Tony Fauci keeps doing this, because I have to say there is no senator, no political party, no objective that should override the Constitution.

Paul: Dr. Fauci, were you ever made aware of gain-of-function research on monkeypox being conducted at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center back at Fort Detrick?

Oh, this is out of —

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Although Tony Fauci, I should add, is not in charge of NBACC.

Paul: Did the CIA ever transfer funds to NIH under an interagency agreement?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights —

This is Tulsi Gabbard. So Tulsi Gabbard alleged that there was this network of biolabs funded by the Department of Defense and eventually also the Department of Homeland Security was involved. They’re trying to say that basically Fauci was sort of the puppet master controlling this, like, international network of gain-of-function labs.

This is going to be really unsatisfying for Rand Paul. Rand Paul really should have learned how to phrase his questions in a more bombastic way that can communicate this to people better. He’s really not explaining to people what he’s trying to get here.

Paul: There is still a question whether or not the intelligence community is adhering to that order. There’s a question of whether or not gain-of-function research is still ongoing. And these are important questions the American people deserve to know. Dr. Fauci, have you been read into the classified Department of Homeland Security program, any prospective special access program? And I’d be happy to tell every single last American what it is and talk about all the issues and concerns.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

But I don’t think actually Americans need to know about every single virology NIH subaward.

Paul: When we look at the research in China, the gain-of-function research that you have denied was gain of function — one of the things that startled the scientists when they saw COVID in the first couple of weeks was when they looked at the sequence of it, they said, oh my God, there’s a furin cleavage site in it. And in this particular family of coronaviruses, the sarbecoviruses, they’d never seen this before. They were also startled to look at it and see how it was coded, what the codons were, and to discover that the codons used out of thirty-six different possibilities turned out to be the one commonly used in gene manipulation by scientists. Dr. Fauci, were the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology capable of inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus?

That’s actually a good question, because I’m not sure that they did have the skills to do that.

Paul: So one of the experiments that was pretty common was they would take the backbone of a SARS virus — and this would be a SARS virus that the backbone itself wasn’t that dangerous. But then they would dig through guano, three hundred feet underground, bat guano, and find other viruses, unknown viruses, and take the S protein off of an unknown virus and stick it on a backbone. And then they would infect mice that have humanized cells.

Not humanized cells. They’re expressing a transgene for the human receptor that allows the virus to bind the receptor that we know it can bind, the human receptor, to be internalized into the cell — to see if they’ll infect human cells.

Paul: What if one escapes? What if you keep infecting this and do serial passage? You actually adapt the virus to be infectious to humans.

No, you don’t. Serial passage invokes a lot of changes depending on how you serially passage it. If you serially passage SARS coronavirus 2 in Vero cells — or the cells we use to often grow our stocks — it often loses the furin cleavage site that you’re excited about, because it has a cell-culture-specific adaptation that does not adapt to humans.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Paul: One of the arguments that you and others have made against this virus coming from the lab is it couldn’t have come from the viruses that have been published.

And nobody’s really arguing that. I think from the very beginning, people acknowledged that the viruses that have been published are too evolutionarily distant.

Paul: But what has never been acknowledged by the side who tries to call the other side a conspiracy theory — which is really something you don’t usually see in a scientific debate — an article printed in The Lancet by your friends who called this a conspiracy theory. These are the kind of things you see as a screed on a political website. You don’t really see this in science.

It is a conspiracy theory. How often does this dude read The Lancet? He’s such a bad ophthalmologist that he had to start his own board certification.

Paul: We’re wondering, when you do this, when you combine these viruses and are able to grow them in humanized cells, whether or not this kind of risky research — whether you call it gain-of-function or not, whether you use the definition of gain-of-function, whether this kind of research… I think in your House testimony, you testified that you never traveled to China and that you were unaware that anybody at NIH ever examined the labs, that you trusted the Chinese scientists. I think you said that even recently, that with your discretion, you trusted the Chinese scientists. The problem is that even in our country, we trust our scientists. They’re good American scientists, probably doing the right thing for America. But at the same time, we do oversight to make sure it’s not dangerous research. We also investigate the lab. I believe Fort Detrick, one of our main labs, was closed down in the last year or two because of a research incident that was dangerous with dangerous pathogens.

It was not a research incident.

Paul: The American people would want to know how could you approve this dangerous research in China, say that you trusted the Chinese scientists, and then in the end, you had to admit that you’d never been there and none of your inspectors had ever been there. Dr. Fauci, at any of the labs where this dangerous research was occurring, were any American lab oversight or lab investigators — did they ever appear in these labs to make sure that they were safe labs?

I don’t even know what that means. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has its own institutional biosafety committee that handles all of this.

Paul: And we know this because the first Muddy Waters report, which came from a different Senate committee, showed, in fact, some of their biosafety — it could have come from a virus not previously published. Dr. Fauci, are you aware that Dr. Shi, who worked for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was said to, and I think in her own words, have over a hundred viruses that had not been previously published that could have been a close enough relative to create COVID —

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Paul: Under your testimony previously when you denied ever having funded gain-of-function in China, it was so adamant as to be striking, to leave no room for any interpretation of what is or isn’t gain-of-function research. But there’s another important question. Did you fund gain-of-function research in other biolabs around the world?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Paul: The one research project that we do know you did fund is the one that Ron Fouchier did. It’s important to talk about because this sort of was the beginning of the debate over gain of function.

This wasn’t just me. I wasn’t even aware of the debate ten years ago.

Paul: This was other scientists — over two hundred scientists at the Cambridge Working Group signed a protest because they didn’t think you should fund the research, and they didn’t think it should even be published because it was sort of a roadmap as to how to make a bioweapon.

Okay. “It shouldn’t be published.” This is ridiculous. This is a whole thing that started way back in, like —

Paul: The good news about animal viruses is they don’t infect humans very well. It will infect humans, but doesn’t go from human to human very well. Ron Fouchier, with the money that you provided to him, did an experiment where he caused purposeful mutations —

The ship’s already sailed. We already know how to do this stuff. Anybody could do it, provided you have the viruses and you have the right way to do it.

Paul: People saw this and were aghast at the decision-making process, that you decided to fund this.

Who was aghast? Nobody was aghast.

Paul: This is when the debate came about. And you wrote in support of this in the Washington Post. And you said, even if a scientist is bitten, even if a pandemic should occur, the knowledge is worth the risks. Do you still stand by that? Would you like to qualify at all whether or not the knowledge of gain of function is worth the risks, particularly in this case?

Since we now know the knowledge of gain of function is describing a variety of very, very different experiments. Lots and lots of different experiments can be classified as gain of function.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

People being aghast at something is not evidence. Unnamed people being aghast at something is not evidence. Talking about gain-of-function research in general is not evidence. None of this is evidence of any wrongdoing at all. It doesn’t even suggest ethics violations.

Paul: And he is a scientist at Stanford. He, I think, has classified clearance. He’s been a consultant to our government probably for a decade or more. And he’s written about this publicly. He says the opposite. He said that the risks of this research do not outweigh the benefits. He said we shouldn’t do it.

You know what, that’s David Relman’s opinion. Richard Ebright is so abusive, and he is not a virologist, and neither is David Relman. None of these people have the expertise that is needed to actually make a determination about whether this research is risky or dangerous or not. David Relman’s experience is primarily with studying the microbiome. Richard Ebright’s experience is primarily with looking at the structure of different bacterial polymerases, developing antibiotics. Kevin Esvelt, who’s a CRISPR scientist at MIT, also wrote about this gain of function — I don’t know, he says that basically every viral genome is a recipe for bioterror. None of these people have the expertise to make these statements. They don’t have the qualifications to evaluate this.

Paul: Would you like to at least answer this one question for us today and let us know whether or not you’ve changed your mind on whether or not the benefits of gain-of-function research outweigh the risks?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer.

You know, gain-of-function research, as I mentioned, is a lot of different things. I do not support gain-of-function research that has no purpose. But that is not the purpose here.

Paul: The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege. The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today. Senator Peters.

Look at all these people clapping for Rand Paul’s pathetic performance.

“Now, stripping him of his right to counsel”

Paul: You’re not recognized. If you are unruly, you will be removed from the proceeding. You are not recognized. And you are not recognized, sir. Sir, you are not recognized. You are not recognized. Security. You will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table. And we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive. Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can’t do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises. So I would say, sir, sit quietly and don’t say another word. I said sit quietly. You are not recognized. Another word and you’re gone.

Nice try, dude.

Peters: Mr. Chairman, I’d like to hear what the attorney has to say.

Paul: He is not recognized by the committee or the chair. If he speaks again, he will be removed from the room. This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers. He can advise — his lawyers can give him advice. He’s got a half dozen here. They’re all allowed to talk to him.

Well, unfortunately, he has to have a half dozen of them because of the witch hunt you’re perpetrating against him.

Paul: In fact, the attorney was told not to sit at the table, and he’s not obeying that recommendation. There’s a row behind you, sir. That’s where you were told to sit, and you’re not. And now you’re disrupting the proceedings. And so, look, this is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered — for a lawyer not listening to the rules. That’s the way you want to be remembered. And that’s what you’re going to do. You are not recognized, sir.

That’s how he’d like to be remembered. That’s his legacy. What a piece of shit. Now, stripping him of his right to counsel. So, you know, degrading another one of his constitutional rights. This is just absurd.

Paul: Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today.

Sen. Gary Peters

Peters: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The COVID pandemic is not the first or the last public health crisis to impact our nation. In December, I released a report that identified significant failures in our federal government’s preparedness and initial response to COVID-19. It’s a very large report, which I have right here. It contains seventeen key findings and corresponding recommendations, including the need to invest in sustainable domestic manufacturing capabilities for critical medical supplies, build the infrastructure needed to surge testing capacity for infectious diseases, and robustly fund public health emergency preparedness and response across all levels of government. Unfortunately, multiple administrations, including the current Trump administration, have failed to fund or to reform our health preparedness. This is something that I would hope the committee in the future would investigate. It needs to be taken a look at.

Yeah, it does. I mean, that’s one way of putting it. We’re completely gutting all of those things that you just mentioned, Gary.

Peters: There’s a foodborne parasite affecting thousands of people in Michigan and across the country, and our federal agencies still haven’t fully pinned down the source of that outbreak.

No, not at all, actually.

Peters: Measles cases in this country are the highest they’ve been in thirty-five years. More children are getting sick and even hospitalized from this preventable disease. Over a thousand people have died from the Ebola virus in Africa, and we don’t know how widespread this crisis actually is.

It’s pretty widespread, and it’s getting worse.

Peters: We have a virus scare on a cruise ship, and though it hasn’t made headlines in the way that the screwworm threatening our food security has, I remain concerned about bird flu that is also spreading and could one day cause a pandemic.

Yes, I am very worried about that, right along with you, Gary.

Peters: Since January, the Trump administration has taken a number of actions to drastically weaken our ability to fight infectious diseases and biological threats that endanger Americans. These actions are both incomprehensible and are also inexcusable.

But they’re not incomprehensible once you realize that’s the point.

Peters: They include slashing funding for public health and infectious disease research, canceling contracts for cutting-edge vaccine technology, shutting agencies responsible for tackling infectious diseases around the world, firing thousands of federal employees tasked with keeping our communities and our medicines and our food supply safe, and injecting political appointees into what should be nonpolitical grant-making functions. That is something this committee should be looking at. I could go on. I could go on on all the topics that we need to be looking at moving forward to protect this country. We’re not doing that in this committee. That’s what this committee was designed to do.

What we need to do to protect this country is to stop having hearings like this one.

Peters: We should get back to that and think about the future of this country and keeping this country safe.

Yeah, we should.

Peters: When a crisis like COVID-19 strikes, we have an obligation to examine what went right and what went wrong, to provide accountability for the American people. Congress certainly has done that. Between the House and Senate, nearly twenty different committees — twenty different committees, including this committee, as I mentioned — have conducted oversight of the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting transcribed interviews, holding dozens of hearings, and released more than ten reports. Today’s exercise, unfortunately, is a stark departure from those largely bipartisan legitimate efforts. The chairman has shut the minority out of participating equally in these efforts, withheld information, selectively released documents — actions that completely undermine the credibility of this investigation. I will enter into the record without objection, Mr. Chairman, a letter that I sent to you that detailed all of those areas that we have concerns with and where we were shut out. I think today’s hearing, unfortunately, does real damage. It’s turning to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling. It does so in a way that leaves people facing death threats. This is only going to, unfortunately, deter other scientific experts from public service, understanding that this is what they would have to go through as they provide their advice to us. We’re not going to be a nation safer by doing these kinds of activities. And I hope that we can restore our legitimate bipartisan oversight that’s going to help strengthen our public health and pandemic preparedness and other homeland priorities. That’s what this committee needs to focus on. It hasn’t the last year and a half. Let’s hope it does.

What happened in the last year and a half? That’s right. The Republicans got the majority and Rand Paul became the chair.

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sen. Ron Johnson: Mr. Chairman. Dr. Fauci, I hope the American people listen very carefully to Chairman Paul’s opening statement.

Here we go. Ron Johnson, senator from Texas — I mean, it’s a stunning indictment. Sorry, Wisconsin. Massive anti-vaxxer.

Johnson: The actions you took have been so destructive to global health. I certainly understand why you needed a pardon.

Right, because we were planning to go after you like this.

Johnson: You’re not answering any questions because I think it would be almost impossible for you to answer the questions truthfully.

Oh, no. Well, he actually explained why he’s not going to answer any questions — because you’re trying to railroad him.

Johnson: What you did —

What did he do besides his job?

Johnson: — self-incriminating. It’s pathetic.

Ron Johnson held a committee meeting, an oversight hearing a couple months ago, basically saying that COVID vaccines cause turbo cancer and myocarditis, and he had a whole lineup of anti-vaxxers.

Johnson: There are so many legitimate questions that deserve answers, and now you’re not going to provide those answers. So with my limited time, I’m going to —

Bloviate.

Johnson: — talk about things that my investigation revealed —

His investigation.

Johnson: — that have not been adequately answered and quite honestly haven’t been adequately covered. I’ll kind of combine the questions into kind of one. But, you know, I certainly — let’s put up the last COVID chart. I was warned pretty early on about the dangers of the experimental gene therapy that you’ve called a vaccine, but it really falls under the definition of gene therapy.

mRNA vaccines cause turbo cancer. Spike is toxic. No, it doesn’t. It does not integrate into the genome.

Johnson: I was going to ask you, I mean, were you carefully monitoring the safety surveillance systems like VAERS and V-safe that literally were deluged with complaints?

Is Tony Fauci going over VAERS? That’s actually the CDC’s job, and he works for the NIH.

Johnson: There have been almost one point seven million adverse events reported to the VAERS system. Of those, over thirty-nine thousand were deaths. And of those deaths, twenty-four percent occur on the day of vaccination within one or two days.

Here we go. Some crack analysis from the scientists over at Children’s Health Defense.

Johnson: Twenty-four percent, by the way, just happens to be the same percentage that a Rasmussen poll pointed out the American public believe they know somebody who died of the experimental gene therapy.

This is actually why I call my Substack Rasmussen Retorts — because Rasmussen Reports is a shitty Republican polling firm that does stuff like that. They do polls that are like, do you know somebody who died from the experimental gene therapy vaccine? And then they’re like, check it out, we just got like eight percent of the respondents saying that they know somebody who died from the experimental gene therapy vaccine.

Johnson: I think the actions you took to make sure that disinformation wasn’t spread —

This wasn’t disinformation. This was the truth. It is disinformation. You’re manipulating data from databases that don’t say anything about vaccine injuries or vaccine safety.

Johnson: My investigation shows that on March first of 2021, less than three months after the emergency use authorizations, he was warned by Dr. Anna Sharshman, a data mining expert, that the algorithm they were using to analyze VAERS data was going to hide and mask safety signals. Twenty-six days later, and three months consecutively after that, they did data runs with a new algorithm that unmasked those safety signals. They showed dozens of safety signals — sudden cardiac death, cerebral artery occlusion, basal ganglia stroke, agonal rhythm, Bell’s palsy.

Yeah, and you know what happens when that occurs? That means that you could report anything. People have reported, like, that they grew a giant purple penis on their forehead. And, like, that’s in VAERS. Obviously, that’s not — you can’t verify anything that’s in VAERS.

Johnson: Your diaries now show that you actually suffered — I think probably June of the year, they convene a work group at CDC, usually part of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. But maybe that injection, all those boosters you took, might have caused it. And I’ll ask this question. Were you ever made aware of the fact that Peter Marks was warned that the algorithm was going to hide the safety signals? And were you told that senior FDA officials were given dozens showing dozens of safety signals? Raise your hand — how many people have known somebody who died from the COVID injection?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Johnson: Next area I want to go through. In that same month of March 2021, an employee at NIH, Dr. Nath, had a team of researchers who were diagnosing and treating individuals who’d been severely injured by the genetic therapy injections. Dr. Nath told those individuals, stay quiet. We want to make sure that we gather all the information and then release it to doctors so they can treat people like yourself.

Well, that’s not a bad approach. It’s not “keep quiet.” It’s “don’t tell people shit that you’re not sure about.”

Johnson: I’ll enter this in the record. Publishing that study — it finally was put on a preprint server, telling no one, I think about May of 2022. I think what’s noteworthy about this is Dr. Nath told the injured participants that early treatment, early intervention was crucial. Early treatment — that means hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. And yet within the NIH they were questioning, what was Dr. Nath doing? They didn’t want to publish it because publishing it would create vaccine hesitancy.

No, I don’t think that NIH ever did that. NIH is not saying that we’re going to lie about safety signals. NIH says we’re going to look into this more carefully.

Johnson: Throughout the pandemic, I always pushed early treatment. We’ve got things in here where you were really concerned about remdesivir because it was untested, but hydroxychloroquine is an approved drug. Maybe some safety issues, but we had a great deal of experience with it. Suggest that perhaps all of a sudden you have the Surgisphere study retracted within two weeks because it’s completely false, totally blew up the use of hydroxychloroquine, and then it does not work to ivermectin. Because I had close contact by so many people, I referred them to doctors who actually had the courage and compassion to treat.

Which also doesn’t work. Oh, you mean the grifters who are selling people ivermectin that doesn’t work? At a huge markup, I should add.

Johnson: But I was going to ask you whether you were involved in the FDA attack on ivermectin.

The FDA attack on ivermectin? The FDA did not attack ivermectin. The FDA declined to authorize or approve ivermectin. So there’s no evidence — it doesn’t work for COVID. It works great for helminthic infections and some ectoparasites.

Johnson: I just don’t want to take time to find the exact quote. On that exact same day, and I’ve got the studies right here — there was a website that was tracking the randomized controlled studies. Here they are. Showing a sixty, seventy percent efficacy of ivermectin.

What a waste of paper. Printing that stuff out?

Johnson: The same thing you say — there’s no evidence. There’s all kinds of evidence.

There’s no evidence, actually. Everything that he’s holding, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not evidence.

Johnson: Loved ones had to go to hospitals, had to sue hospitals. Just, would you try it? So I want to know, to what extent were you involved in sabotaging hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and did you do that because you knew the only way you could get an emergency use authorization for these experimental gene therapies was if there was no effective treatment? So is that why you helped sabotage these cheap generic drugs in favor of remdesivir, which by the way, nurses called “run, death is near”?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

I also hate remdesivir. It doesn’t work very well.

Johnson: But let me end on this note, because this just came to light. Now you actually lied to your own diary. You lied to your own diary. On March twenty-seven, 2020, you wrote in your diary: “To my surprise, yesterday the POTUS sent a letter to governors outlining a plan to reopen county by county while monitoring the spread of virus in low-risk counties. This was half-baked and never shown to Deb or I before it was sent out.” So we have evidence that, in fact, you know, you were fully aware of it and certainly approved, if not authored it. I simply ask you, I mean, is that true?

What is he talking about? He said it was half-baked.

Johnson: Did you literally lie to your own diary? Did you know of that letter? Did you lie to your own diary? Again, Mr. Chairman, I’d ask you to — answer that one simple question. Honestly, did you lie to your own diary?

Tony looks like he’s about to start laughing. I would too.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Under the advice of counsel, I think you should laugh in his face, Tony. Because it’s stupid.

Sen. Maggie Hassan

Sen. Maggie Hassan: Thank you. Dr. Fauci, I want to start by thanking you for more than fifty years of service to this country at the National Institutes of Health. And it is unfortunate that you have been put in the position that you are in today. And it must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you.

Indeed.

Hassan: It must be very frustrating for your attorneys to hear the chair’s mischaracterization of the legal issues and posture that impact your decisions at the witness table today.

Indeed. Very much so.

Hassan: I was going to ask you a series of questions about things that are relevant right now to the people of the United States about the state of public health in this country. Since President Trump took office in 2025, more than four thousand five hundred cases of measles have been reported. That is more cases in the year and a half since Donald Trump has been president than were reported from 2000 to 2024 combined. Children are dying because there has been increased vaccine hesitancy fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, and frankly, his entire administration. Thousands of people in the United States of America have been sickened by a foodborne parasite, and the outbreak is nowhere near under control, as staffing at the FDA and other critical public health entities has been slashed by Russell Vought and Elon Musk. Last year, the National Institutes of Health awarded, I think it’s two hundred and one fewer grants compared to the previous years — two hundred and seven, I am corrected — compared to previous years. As those grants were either canceled or delayed, especially at the beginning of the Trump administration, I can tell my colleagues what the impact was on people in New Hampshire, on scientists in New Hampshire, on clinical trials in New Hampshire, where people’s cancer treatment was interrupted because Elon Musk and Russell Vought know better, they say, than the people at NIH about what to fund. And because they did some sort of word search, it seems, through some of the grants — and boy, oh boy, if you were studying rural health in New Hampshire and trying to understand how to better engage people who need health care in rural America, that was off the table. America is losing researchers and scientists to other countries, because researchers and scientists, highly trained, highly qualified, invested in often by the American taxpayer, are finding the hostility from this administration so strong that it interferes with their science, and they want to pursue science wherever that science takes them. I also sit on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. We have had a number of hearings with nominees recently to fill critical spots.

Oh, here we go.

Hassan: One of those nominees is Dr. Erica Schwartz, a brilliant woman — medical degree, biomedical engineering degree. I think she also told us she has a law degree and a master’s in public health. She was a two-star admiral in the United States Navy. An experienced doctor. And yet, when I asked her if she would push back at Secretary Kennedy if he instructed her to suspend the promotion of the flu vaccine, as he did at some point in the last few months — there’s an email to prove it — she couldn’t answer that question. She either could not, would not, or had been bullied into evading a question about whether she, as the director of CDC, would stand up to Secretary Kennedy, the most unqualified Secretary of Health and Human Services this country has ever seen, and more than unqualified, somebody who pursues conspiracy theories, degrades people with disabilities, and continues to promote disproved science.

And kill people.

Hassan: That’s the state of health care and public health in this country right now, not to mention the trillion dollars or so of cuts to the Medicaid program that is decimating health care in my state and decimating it around the country, not to mention the refusal of my colleagues and this administration to extend critical tax credits for people who are trying to afford insurance on the Affordable Care Act.

That’s right.

Hassan: I just was at one of my community health clinics, and they are reporting fewer and fewer people coming in for care, disrupting care because they can no longer afford health insurance. And that is impacting, of course, the revenue stream to the community health clinic, their ability to hire and pay people, their ability to take care of their community.

I’m glad the Democrats are at least using this propaganda session for good.

Hassan: That’s what I wish we were having hearings about in this committee and in the HELP committee.

That is right.

Hassan: That’s what I wish we were trying to address in a bipartisan way.

That’s what you were elected to do, and I wish you were too.

Hassan: But instead, we are here… because you had a distinguished career trying to put Americans’ public health first.

Making a mockery out of our American democratic procedures. I want to be very clear about this: the research that Tony Fauci funded has saved millions of lives in America and around the world.

Sen. James Lankford

Sen. James Lankford: Dr. Fauci, thanks for coming today. I know you’re invoking your Fifth Amendment right, which you have the right to be able to do constitutionally, but thanks for coming and being a part of this. There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up, and hopefully some day in the future we’ll be able to get all this clarity to be able to pull together. There were over a million Americans that died from COVID. You know that well. You were tracking the numbers literally every single day, those affected and those that died, from the earliest days. There are a lot of lessons that we’ve got to learn from this that we should put into history to be able to determine what happens in the future. How do we respond in the future? How do we deal with something like this again? It was uncharted territory for everyone. But I would tell you, countless families, including my own, watched a loved one die behind glass or through a screen because we couldn’t get access to him. Children couldn’t get to school. People missed their prom.

Once again, this is Tony Fauci’s fault.

Lankford: There are lots of things that happened that dramatically changed the future of the country. The mental health issues that we have continued to deal with from the isolation have been profound. Even something as simple as children that wore masks or were around adults wearing masks for all that time are slower in learning language now, because they couldn’t watch someone’s lips moving, and so they’re slower in that. Amazingly enough, churches and places of worship were forced to be closed down. There were even churches that met with a pastor who preached in the parking lot and the congregants all met in their cars with windows up, and police came and scattered them and said, you can’t be here. The simple act of social distancing became an issue, as everyone guessed, what’s the right distance to be away from someone else? It was six feet. Whether that was right or not, who knows? Literacy rates have declined, not to mention the loss of lives and health experiences that have been out there for many Americans. So there are legitimate questions. I wanted to be able to raise some of those to be able to walk through some of this, because it has been very, very challenging. As we’ve gone through some of your notes and your diary and other things that are out there, we’re trying to be able to pull bits and pieces of things to be able to learn lessons. On May the sixth, 2020, you wrote at that time, “I had a conversation with Robert Redfield,” as you know well, was then the director of CDC, “about the fact that greater than one million children worldwide have missed their measles vaccination because of the shutdown.” You stated, “This is terrible and needs to be addressed, since on that basis alone there would be far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children. I need to bring this up to the TF” — the task force. Did you ever have an opportunity to bring up the potential —

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

The reason that we have measles infection rates going around the world now is disinformation campaigns by the secretary and all of his little anti-vaccine issues.

Lankford: Really coming up is the lab issue. This was clearly discussed, about whether this came from a lab or whether this came from nature. There are obvious issues and differences between the two to be able to know this. You’ve had a lot of conversation on this. Scientists around the world were in conversation on this. There were different statements that you even made in your private notes and your public notes on it. On January the twenty-sixth of 2020 — this is before we had our even our first tragic death of coronavirus in the United States — you wrote, “It now appears using every data that the genomic data, the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market,” which was the big rumor that was out there, the wet market in China. “We know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier.”

Right.

Lankford: On January the thirty-first, you wrote about a phone call. You wrote, “The people on the phone felt the mutations around the furin cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally, since it would require an evolutionary jump that they found nowhere in bat isolates. They bring up the possibility this could have been deliberately inserted, and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely.” February the first —

I mean, so this was six years ago. We barely knew anything about this virus. This is called hypothesis development.

Lankford: “Ron said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time in diverting our efforts to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original gain-of-function person with Yoshi. Also, Kristian was the other one.” “The rest, Kristian Andersen, is possibly possible.” “And given the fact that Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in gain-of-function sequencing viruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go.” That’s a remarkable statement for February the first of 2020.

It’s his impression when they’re having a scientific discussion.

Lankford: You knew well that something was moving. You identified February the first, before any of us had ever heard of the Wuhan lab — not only the Wuhan lab in the conversation, but literally the scientist that you named in your own notes, the lead scientist that was there. It’s interesting to me on that. And the questions I was going to ask you were just your background and knowledge about the Wuhan lab and Dr. Shi and all the details. I’m aware of where you have been on trying to be able to plead your Fifth Amendment right, which is your right to be able to do, but also want to be able to find out some facts to be able to help us for the future on this. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May of 2020 — they think it came out of the lab; that has only been recently unclassified — had this statement: “We assess all the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus, specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors, were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid to late” — now the question that I have for you is this is May the twenty-seventh of 2020. All the conditions.

This is the report that most people will see. They’ve never been able to show any kind of progenitor virus. In order to have a lab leak, you have to have the virus. They never have. There’s no evidence whatsoever. Nobody’s ever produced it. Any lab, anywhere in the U.S., anywhere in China — no lab had that virus.

Lankford: It’s important for the future that people in your position have to have access to this kind of information. Is there any way you can answer that question?

That’s how strong that evidence would be.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Lankford: You wrote on January the twenty-sixth of 2020, “We should be allowed to send our CDC epidemiologists to China to work with them,” so they could see the data firsthand. You also wrote on February the twelfth, 2020, that you had great concerns about the World Health Organization, because they depend greatly on China, and as you stated, often bows to them. This is a really important issue that we’ve got to resolve for the future. It’s not just our cooperation with Chinese scientists. It’s our acknowledgment that China covered up their data, wouldn’t allow our scientists to be able to come in. They cleaned up the wet market. They cleaned up the other areas. They wouldn’t allow you to get access to all the other scientists there, including their health records, what happened to them, or even all the sequencing that they had done in advance. For the future of our research and our cooperation with any scientists around the world, I think it’s really important that we resolve, if we’re going to fund research and cooperate with you, we’ve got to have certain things from you. If things go sideways, we’ve got to have access to all information in all places. You were noting not only that China was affecting the World Health Organization and that China was bending them to their will, and so the World Health Organization was putting out data that you saw, at least at that point, as being from a Chinese perspective, covering up what was going on. But you also noted we weren’t able to get access to all this information. We’ve got to be able to figure this out for the future to be able to make sure that research that is done, we have access to all information. If something goes sideways at some point, which clearly it did at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — how are you going to have access to all information?

We already have all of the information.

Lankford: How are you going to get all the information from China? The security standards there than many other labs around the world, yet they were doing this very dangerous research. What can we gain? And what advice could you give us to say, in a future setting, we’ve got to make sure that we actually get information from people, and we can be guaranteed that we’re going to get that insight?

Fauci: Yes, sir. I plead the Fifth. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Lankford: I yield back.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal

Sen. Richard Blumenthal: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the darkest days or times in our history. Hospitals were overflowing. Navy medical ships were docked in the Hudson River. Emergency rooms were unprecedentedly triaging. More so than the worst week of the pandemic, which happens to have been the last week of President Trump’s first term, more than twenty-five thousand Americans died of COVID-19. Easy to forget those dark days. But for the past eighteen months, the Trump administration has been engaged in a campaign to rewrite this history.

Indeed.

Blumenthal: And today’s proceeding, I fear, is part of that effort.

I know for a fact that today’s proceeding is part of that effort.

Blumenthal: In our Senate’s history —

It sure is.

Blumenthal: The Trump administration has launched a baseless set of smears against vaccines that helped pull us out of that public health crisis.

That’s right.

Blumenthal: Vaccines that are undoubtedly President Trump’s greatest accomplishment. It has slashed funding to local public health departments that were on the front lines of the pandemic. And those health care workers are heroes. It has disparaged those heroes as woke or wasteful. And it has used a politicized Department of Justice to target the researchers who helped us track and understand the novel virus. Today’s hearing is another page in that playbook, sadly, tragically. Dr. Fauci, you spent five decades in public service, including nearly four decades in leadership at the National Institutes of Health, helping to conquer COVID-19, also HIV, swine flu, Zika, Ebola, and other epidemics, with real-life results saving human lives. Put aside all the flowery rhetoric that we hear in the United States Senate — Dr. Fauci has saved lives, as have public health officials in the United States and throughout the world, and today we are demeaning and degrading their life-saving service. Republicans are eager to rebrand you as a villain in order to distract from their own failure to protect Americans from soaring health care costs that have been rising astronomically in the last couple of years, and from unsafe food, which has caused cyclospora to spread, and resurgent measles as a result of the anti-vaccine policy. This hearing is the culmination of a years-long crusade which started more than six years ago when Dr. Fauci dared to contradict President Trump.

Indeed.

Blumenthal: The campaign to vilify you, Dr. Fauci, is just one part of this larger campaign against science and against America, a campaign that has made Americans less safe. It is shameful that in a country like ours, a dedicated public servant like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him. His attorney has been gagged, thrown out of this hearing room for being unruly in asserting his client’s constitutional rights. He has written a letter to the chairman that is an explanation for the reasons why Dr. Fauci is, in fact, invoking his constitutional right. It is a right. And I would ask that this letter from David Schertler and Daniel Nardello be made part of the record, if there’s no objection.

It sounds like two attorneys, not a half dozen.

Blumenthal: The attorney has also issued a statement within the last half hour, I believe, that sets forth again the reasons that he is here to help protect his client’s rights. And I would ask that that statement be made part of the record as well, Mr. Chairman.

Paul: Without objection.

Blumenthal: Let’s be very clear. The Fifth Amendment is a right of everyone appearing before an authority like this one.

Indeed.

Blumenthal: It should be respected.

Not only should it be respected, it needs to be respected by law.

Blumenthal: The reason that Dr. Fauci has invoked it, in the words of his attorney, quote: “During and after the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci appeared at least a dozen times for congressional hearings in the Senate alone in answer to questions about the very issues on which you purport to seek information. He has been thoroughly transparent and consistent in providing factual information to Congress, and he is deeply familiar with the processes and protocols of sharing information with the legislative branch.” And then referring to the chairman: “This yearslong public crusade against Dr. Fauci makes one thing clear. This is not a serious effort to seek information from Dr. Fauci in a transcribed interview for a valid legislative purpose. You are single-mindedly fixated on seeing Dr. Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that outcome that you have created a personal brand around it.” Those are the words of his attorney. He has created a personal brand around it. And he cites as well the statements of the chairman, which indicate a clear intent that the result of this proceeding be a prosecution. Quote: “The power of some of us must be used for good, like putting Fauci in jail.” That’s from December twenty-three, 2025. “I want to give him a subpoena and a jail cell.” Also from December of 2025. The first was 2024. Those kinds of statements by the chairman of a committee, in tweets, certainly provide a well-founded fear that the proceeding underway is simply an effort to trap Dr. Fauci in some kind of criminal wrongdoing.

Literally, Rand Paul has been so clear about his desire to do this for years and years and years.

Blumenthal: During some of the dark days in this body under Senator Joe McCarthy, it became standard operating procedure to seek that kind of prosecutorial objective. We should not be part of a rerun of that kind of effort. This attempt to rebrand one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history is a shortsighted act of desperation that will leave us less prepared for the next pandemic. It is an insult to the memory of more than one million Americans who died from COVID-19.

It sure is.

Blumenthal: If there are valid scientific questions about the origins of this pandemic, COVID-19, about the kinds of steps that were taken to counter it, about the need for more preparation, they should certainly be addressed. But not in a show trial.

Exactly.

Blumenthal: Not as part of a continuing vendetta against a single individual.

Indeed.

Blumenthal: And unfortunately, I fear that is what we are seeing today. America deserves better.

And it is going to be a template for doing this to many other individuals.

Paul: In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment and then your attorney gets to testify. That’s what that letter is. The attorney’s complaining and testifying, saying he didn’t do it, the prosecution’s unfair. You don’t get to do that. That’s one thing you give up when you take the Fifth Amendment. You say, I’m not going to testify. I’m not going to give you any information. You don’t then get to put your lawyer forward to justify it. He can do it in the press, but you can’t come and testify. He was not invited to testify. And he didn’t testify. And it was appropriate to have him ejected.

And you booted him. And you’re also mocking Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights. So your opinion on this, Rand Paul, is ignored.

Sen. Rick Scott

Sen. Rick Scott: I mean, I know people have been asking questions about Dr. Fauci for years. So Dr. Fauci, your diary has made clear that you love being a hero, a celebrity —

Oh, for God’s sake.

Scott: — and you’re having the eyes of the world upon you. You love every newspaper profile, every photo shoot, every fancy dinner with the elites. To the Americans who lost family members, who lost trust in our federal government, you’re not a hero. Unfortunately, you’re a villain. You made yourself the story and abandoned the American people to serve your own ego.

Shut up, Rick.

Scott: I’d like to talk about your relationship with David Morens. He was the senior advisor in the NIAID Office of the Director, your office, for sixteen years. He was your friend. He was a frequent guest at your house. You reportedly co-authored over fifty scientific articles with him.

Yeah, what’s the matter with having friends?

Scott: You turned to him first right after COVID-19 first occurred. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged him with conspiracy against the United States, in addition to other charges, as part of a conspiracy to conceal information and falsify records to suppress alternative theories about the origins of COVID-19. Now, you publicly kicked this man to the curb, saying “Dr. Morens was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other substantive issues.” So let’s start with the use of personal Gmail accounts in David Morens’s relationship with Peter Daszak: “I forgot to say that there’s no worry about FOIA. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

Look, I’m not defending this behavior.

Scott: Dr. Fauci, did Dr. Morens’s relationship with Peter Daszak concern you? Yes or no?

But at the same time, David Morens is —

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

And Tony probably doesn’t want to produce more evidence for show trials like this in the future.

Scott: Did you ever receive a text about your work at NIAID to your personal cell phone?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did any text about your work at NIAID that went to your personal cell phone ever become part of federal records?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did you maintain a personal email account while serving as director?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did you ever receive work-related communications on that Gmail account from David Morens?

None of your business.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did you preserve any work-related communications on that Gmail account from David Morens?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did David Morens ever provide you with documents outside of those two ways that would violate NIH policy?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Now, let’s look at two other communications. You emailed Dave Morens on January twenty-six, 2020, quote: “It is important that I speak with you tonight. Please call me at home.” This is part of exhibit two that you have in front of you. This email sent the same day, the exact same day you write in an internal document, quote: “Now we know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier,” unquote. Would you call the origins of COVID-19 a substantive issue?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Did you discuss COVID-19 origins with Dr. Morens on this phone call?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Now let’s take a closer look at the last time you testified before Congress. This is part of what you have in front of you — exhibit four, which is part of the record. In June 2024, you testified that Dr. Morens, quote, “was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other substantive issues. Furthermore, his office is located in a different building from that of the NIAID director,” unquote. Is that still your testimony today?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

That means he gives advice. The fact is, David Morens’s job was not to make policy.

Scott: Now I’ve got exhibit five, which you have in front of you. On October twenty-four, 2021, David Morens texted you to provide information about an advocate for the controversial EcoHealth Alliance grant. You thank him and tell him that you will check the information. Would you agree that this shows an advisory relationship between David Morens and yourself?

His job title was literally “Senior Advisor to the Director.” This is so dumb. Tony was telling him the scope, literally, of David Morens’s advisory responsibilities. But David Morens was supposed to be an advisor to Tony Fauci. His job title was, again, literally Senior Advisor to the Director. And you know how I know that? It was on his email — some of the ones that he did send me from the NIH.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Is there any document in your possession today that would contradict your prior congressional testimony?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Have you deleted, destroyed, or instructed anyone to destroy records after learning Congress was investigating these matters?

I love this. They’re just going from one Republican to the next.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

And somehow Tony Fauci is not falling all over himself to be like, I’m so sorry, I committed all these crimes. What is the matter with these people?

Scott: As you know, Dr. Morens still faces charges related to destroying records while you distance yourself from him. Is that fair to a decades-long friend?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: When is the last time you spoke to him?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: In hindsight, are you disappointed how you handled COVID? Do you have any regrets?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: Any regrets? Dr. Fauci, I want to close with this. Here’s how you impacted my family and people close to me. I have daughters with children. You can’t imagine the questions they had around vaccines for their kids and themselves.

Oh, so your daughters are anti-vaxxers and that’s been so hard for you.

Scott: To make the right decision for their health — I can tell you pregnant women who worked with me were so scared, because every time they went to the doctor, they were told something different about taking the vaccine. And you caused this. Imagine being a mom trying to protect their kids, or an expectant mother trying to figure out what to do. Every three weeks a doctor tells you a new set of guidance on a vaccine. The haphazard information you released and pushed on the American people with little research —

Fauci does not make vaccine guidance.

Scott: — is why there’s so much distrust in our institutions today. That trust is crucial to public health. And you, more than any person in my lifetime, have destroyed that trust for millions of Americans. You lied to hundreds of millions of people amid the worst public health crisis in the century. You failed to follow your own guidance. You forced people to watch their loved ones die alone over the phone.

It’s disgusting.

Scott: You destroyed the federal government’s credibility when it comes to public health. We have entire generations of Americans who rightfully so have lost trust in institutions and people because of you. This has destroyed decades of progress and lifetimes of work because you wanted to fuel your own ego and be the center of attention. What would you do differently with what you know today, Dr. Fauci?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Scott: All the evidence is right here and you still can’t bring yourself to tell the truth or apologize, because you received an auto-pen pardon from a staffer in the Biden White House. If we have another pandemic tomorrow, millions could die because of what you did — what you did to make Americans lose trust in their government when it comes to medicine and health care. How many families have you apologized to who had to watch their loved ones die alone? You breached public trust, and now you’re hiding behind a fraudulent pardon. Your legacy will not be as a man who has saved America from COVID, but as a man who destroyed the public trust in America’s public health institutions in exchange for five years of fame. This is how history will remember you. I yield back.

That’s how history will remember him — as somebody who undid America and ushered in totalitarianism.

Sen. Andy Kim

Sen. Andy Kim: Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for coming out in front of this committee. I know it’s not what you would want. It’s not what you deserve. I just want to say and start by just saying thank you to you for your service to this nation. I didn’t know much about you prior to the pandemic. I came to learn about you, as so many Americans did, but I also had the opportunity to talk to you and engage with you as someone who was a member of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis over in the House of Representatives. When I learned about your background — thirty-eight years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appointed by President Reagan, served under seven presidents, four Republicans and three Democrats — I admire that greatly. I myself had a chance to serve in the executive branch, serving in government under both a Republican president and a Democratic president. And I believe that we need more of that type of work. A place where we can understand our jobs not as coming from a place of partisanship and politics, but that of just public service. And right now I feel the hyper-partisanship growing in this country in dangerous ways. I feel it much more present here on the Hill than I did back when I served as a nonpartisan career public servant at the State Department. And I worry about it. I worry about what kind of trajectory we’re on as a country and what this causes when it comes next for public service and those willing to step up for our nation. And it’s not just in the attacks, but we see it brought out with the cuts to funding, the firing of federal workers, the demonization of their motivations. People calling our public servants criminals, thinking that they are there solely to undermine others that are trying to engage. I look at it right now — it’s not just that the people are being attacked, our public servants being attacked, but that it’s undermining the very nature of the work of governance. You know, these cuts to HHS funding, to NIH funding, to the grants, cuts to the researchers doing the critical work to find cures and medicines — these firings and these cuts, they’re creating a chilling effect, honestly, a chilling effect for the next generation of people who might consider stepping up to serve our nation, to be the next generation of researchers, who now are wondering whether or not this is the right thing for them to do at a time when they see some of their colleagues, or those that they looked up to, being attacked, their funding being cut. Researchers that I talked to who are now either leaving the country or considering leaving the country to do their work because of the sheer unpredictability of America. That this nation, so great, so powerful, has now been crippled with this sense of unpredictability and unreliability. That is not the type of country that I hope we strive to be. I’ve raised this because these attacks upon Dr. Fauci, it’s not just about him. It’s sending signals to others. Others who are thinking about serving our country, our scientists, our doctors, our health care professionals, our researchers — trying to show to them that if you don’t get in line with the politics, that you will also potentially be subject to attacks.

That is a hundred percent correct.

Kim: And from the work that he has done, from HIV/AIDS to Ebola to COVID, we’ve seen him try to engage in these crises. They’re not easy. Especially when it’s a novel disease, when you don’t know what comes next. A lot of unknowns, having to make decisions without the full breadth of knowledge we always wish we had in hindsight. But there is nothing perfect, no perfect clarity when it comes to pandemics, when it comes to crises. I worked in national security in wars and crises. I made judgment calls, gave my best advice to generals, to ambassadors, even to a president. Did I get it all right? No. Did I do my best? I did everything I thought I could with the information that I had. That’s what we all can do. The public servants, they do this work because they love this country and they strive to improve it. It’s not an easy job, but it is because there is so much at stake in our country. These public servants do it because they are in the arena. I just want to end by just reading a portion of this, because I think it’s important as we’re thinking about how to be able to treat public servants through this country to think through this. And in the words of Teddy Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Thank you for your service, Dr. Fauci. I yield back.

That was beautiful.

Sen. Josh Hawley

Sen. Josh Hawley: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh, Doc?

Oh, fucking A.

Hawley: Let’s try something. What day of the week is it today?

This is so obnoxious.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon —

All right, after this bullshit, I’m going to probably have to step off. I actually have a news hit on News Nation to talk about this very hearing. And I think that it is still important to that. I also am not sure that we’re going to get much more out of this, because right now Josh Hawley is asking him what color the carpet is, what color his tie is. And he’s just making Fauci take the Fifth over and over again.

Hawley: You can’t hide under the Fifth Amendment, because you’ve been pardoned. As you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more — Brown v. Walker, 1896 — when he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that. Your lawyers sitting behind you, now shifting nervously in their chairs, they know it. This isn’t about the Constitution. This isn’t about the law. This is about showing solidarity with —

This is a sitting U.S. senator who supported people who were trying to overthrow our government. Never, ever forget that.

Hawley: — the traitors who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. You did all kinds of terrible things. It’s because during the pandemic, you got rich, didn’t you? You got rich while people were dying — hundreds of thousands of Americans, over a million in the end. And you were getting rich. And not only were you doing that, you were using federal employees, your taxpayer money, to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally. Cash prizes totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn’t you? That’s a question.

Oh, that’s a little bit different than what color is my tie. Look, when you get prizes, awards, things like that, sometimes they come with honoraria. Sometimes when you give a talk, you get an honorarium for giving it. It’s pretty normal. I don’t rake in a million dollars, but I do actually get paid sometimes for giving talks or getting awards or that kind of thing. Usually they do come with a cash prize.

Hawley: And what were these individuals doing in the depth of the pandemic, in November of 2020, when millions of Americans were suffering from COVID? What were they doing? I’ll tell you what they were doing. Their focus was on your behalf, soliciting and gathering information for a cash award. Let’s look at it. You’ve got his email right here, right over my shoulder. Greg Folkers says, “I’m working on this nomination for the Dan David Award for Fauci. We need to beef up the COVID part. Do you have language in the can that you can share that delineates how we responded in new ways to COVID?” He sends this to multiple federal employees. What was the Dan David Award? Do you remember, Doc?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel —

It is also not uncommon to have a nomination for an award, especially for somebody at Fauci’s level. It is not unusual for somebody to solicit nominations from that person.

Hawley: Because he used federal employees to get it. And this wasn’t the only award. In fact, you applied for and received at least eight other federal cash prizes on federal time using federal employees and federal resources.

And I know this because I also sit on an awards board.

Hawley: Besides the Dan David Award, you’ve got the Partnership for Public Service. You’ve got the Adelson Prize. You’ve got the Smithsonian Award. You’ve got the National Academy of Medicine Award. You’ve got the CDC Foundation. In fact, you turned your staff into a full-time application machine. You actually wrote to people and said, do you think maybe I’d qualify? And you got cash for all of this. And it wasn’t just one or two employees, was it? In fact, you used eight separate federal employees on federal time using federal resources to solicit cash awards. Isn’t that true?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Hawley: Here they are right over my shoulder. Here’s all of them. The people that you used — federal employees — so that you could go and get cash money. And the most hilarious part is that you weren’t content to even dragoon them into applying for all of these cash awards. You then had them go out to the ethics agencies and ethics watchdogs and demand that you be able to get the money. We’ve got it in your emails. Your staff and employees on federal time using federal resources being paid with federal dollars are soliciting cash for you. And then they’re turning around and saying to the agency, we don’t want just an answer. We want to get to yes, because Fauci wants the money. He wants it. “We want to get to yes and yes takes time.” This is your chief of staff again using federal email to pressure the agency’s own ethics people so that you can get money. And it violated the law.

That’s right. And it is ethical. But you have to go through the ethics process. And again, there is nothing wrong with your staff managing that. That is a normal part.

Hawley: It is a question. You can answer. Go ahead.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Hawley: Federal law, as you very well know, prohibits the solicitation of cash awards or other personal benefits for federal employees. And it certainly prohibits using your own employees to do this.

He’s completely mischaracterized all of his things. Oh, 205? I wonder how many times he practiced that. Powerful, Josh. Just like when you did this to the January Sixers.

Hawley: You were supposed to be the nation’s doctor and you’re playing one on TV, but this is what you were doing with your time.

You were playing a January 6 cheerleader on TV, except you weren’t really playing, were you? You do support that.

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Hawley: Yeah. Yeah, I can see why. I can certainly see why. You know what I can’t quite figure out is why you were so obsessed with it, because you’re already rich. I mean, and your scheme worked here. I mean, your net worth now is north of twelve million dollars. You knocked down over a million dollars in cash awards using federal resources.

It’s like watching Patrick Bateman from American Psycho try to hold the high ground over somebody.

Hawley: Now you’re worth more than twelve million dollars. You’ve got a pension that in its first year paid out north of four hundred thousand dollars a year. A million people dead. You’re using federal employees to get cash awards for you. A million people dead. And you’re here taking the Fifth, because you don’t want to admit that what really happened in all that time was a multi-month, multi-year course of self-dealing. Isn’t that true, Dr. Fauci?

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Hawley: Yeah, well, silence is admission.

No, it’s not, actually.

Hawley: And here’s the real thing. At the end of the day, it wasn’t just about the money, really, was it? It was really about a power trip. I mean, through all of this, you wanted to be the most famous scientist in the world. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV. You wanted to be the sun god of science. You wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all. You wanted to blast Trump. You wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. You wanted to be the guy.

Completely making things up. Making it seem like sitting for InStyle magazine is a crime. This is not a crime. He has every right not to answer questions for the American people when those questions are making a mockery of our Senate, of our judicial system, of our democracy.

Hawley: I tell you what, here’s my conclusion from all this.

I don’t give a shit about this stupid picture on InStyle magazine. This is legal. It’s not a crime. I don’t care if Fauci lost his way. I don’t care if Fauci had a big ego. I don’t care if he was thrilled to meet celebrities. I don’t care if he liked being on TV. Personally, I don’t — I suspect he probably didn’t either. I suspect he very much doesn’t like being on TV today. He’s not a narcissist and a megalomaniac, but even if he were, has he committed a crime? He has not committed a crime. Has he committed a crime? He has not committed a crime.

Hawley: And I hope you’ll go home and write that in your diary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I hope we get a look at your priorities one day, Josh Hawley, as well as your emails, so that we can see who you’ve been corresponding with.

“I’m not here to perhaps attack you or defend”

Unidentified senator: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m not here to perhaps attack you or defend or anything. It’s really just more, honestly — I just want to acknowledge I have had members of my family die from COVID. And now I also grieve for people that I’ve met that have lost their business through the pandemic, and they’ll never be the same. During the pandemic I was the lieutenant governor, so we were in the middle of all of that maelstrom, trying to find the right balance between protecting life and protecting —

I’m not sure how much more we’re going to get out of it. I don’t know. I do have a lot of people who seem to be very engaged, but at the same time, most of the comments I’m seeing are that this is such a bogus hearing — which, in fact, it is. And I do think that we’ve kind of gone over everything that we could possibly go over, although I’m curious to hear John Fetterman’s regret. Maybe that he’s a total putz who lied to all of his constituents about what he was going to do when he got elected.

Sen. John Fetterman

Sen. John Fetterman: Oh, boy. And I thought it seemed to make sense.

Okay, John Fetterman’s belief in the lab.

Fetterman: Now, there was a really advanced kinds of theory. You have this unknown virus out. So I’ll get one minute. Very partisan thing. And now it seems now it’s more and more emerging theory that that would have come from the lab.

No, it’s not an emerging theory, moron. It is absolutely not. You shouldn’t be talking about things that you don’t understand.

Fetterman: We are not become, you know, as I might have been, blinded by the partisan idea that maybe the truth might come from a side that’s different than you are. But I think we should really be willing to pursue truth.

Yes, we all know how nonpartisan you are.

Fetterman: That may have emerged, you know, after all of that. So, and I now cede the remainder back to the chair.

Paul: Thank you.

Okay. I’m not sure that was a question.

“This was just really a straight disinformation campaign”

All right. I think I’m going to cut this right now, because this hearing has really just been a disinformation fest, with some good stuff from the Democrats coming in occasionally, with the exception of John Fetterman’s incoherent ramble there at the end.

I hope that everybody really gets the take-home message that this was just really a straight disinformation campaign. And the purpose of this, of course, as the Democrats correctly noted, is to entrap Fauci in either a lie — they seem to be trying to get him to admit to crimes, or to deny them and then, quote, commit perjury, as Rand Paul introduced at the beginning of this hearing. So it was absolutely right for Tony to take the Fifth for the entire hearing, because it was pretty obvious that no matter what he said, the Republicans were going to try to use it against him to, in fact, prosecute him.

And really the endgame here is that — and what everybody needs to understand is that prosecuting Fauci is not about Fauci entirely. For Rand Paul, it might be. But prosecuting Fauci is about setting the precedent to prosecute anybody who has a political opinion that is different from yours, on the basis of made-up stuff about science, with the understanding that people don’t understand the science well enough to push back and to object to people being essentially railroaded for crimes that they didn’t commit.

So everybody really does need to pay attention to this, because if Fauci is successfully prosecuted, that says very, very bad things for our entire democracy and all of our individual constitutional rights. It certainly says bad things about science. And again, I’m at the American Society for Virology annual meeting right now. Boy, is this a grim environment. My colleagues are really scared because our field faces an existential threat, and so does all of science — which means that our country will be less safe and less secure, because we won’t have any of that research that Tony Fauci funded that created all of those vaccines and drugs that have saved so many lives.

And with that, I’m going to sign off. And thank you all so much for joining me today. I’m going to set up a recap episode of this later on. I’m hoping to have a special guest who can talk with great expertise about gain-of-function research and who knows Tony Fauci personally. And we’ll see about that. But I’ll let you guys know about that. And stay tuned. I’m going to be on News Nation in a few minutes. Bye-bye.

Related from Rasmussen Retorts

• Rasmussen Retorts Episode 5: Five Reasons Why We Think It Was Zoonotic

• NIH FFS: The Freedom From Science Lab Leak Lecture Series

• CREID Pro Quo: A Lie That Will Kill People

• The Saga of the H5N1 Freedom Ostriches

• Drowning in a Sea of Virus

Links from this episode

My Zeteo pieces on this

• Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci – Part 1: The Smear Campaign

• Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci – Part 2: The ‘Lab Leak’ Obsession

The actual evidence on pandemic origins

• Worobey et al., Science 2022 — The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic (PMC free full text)

• Pekar et al., Science 2022 — The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2 (the two-spillover work)

• Andersen et al., Nature Medicine 2020 — The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

• Menachery, Baric, Shi et al., Nature Medicine 2015 — A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence (the chimeric spike/backbone paper Paul described)

• Herfst, Fouchier et al., Science 2012 — Airborne transmission of influenza A/H5N1 virus between ferrets

The hearing and the paper trail

• CNN — Diary entries, a subpoena and an anticipated clash

• NPR — Rand Paul releases Anthony Fauci’s pandemic-era diary notes

• STAT — Anthony Fauci gets Biden preemptive pardon

• DOJ — Former Senior NIAID Official Indicted for Concealing Federal Records (David Morens)

• HSGAC Democrats — Peters Investigation Finds Significant Failures in Federal Government’s Pandemic Preparedness and Initial COVID-19 Response (the 17-findings report)

• Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (1896)

• 5 CFR § 2635.205 — “Limitations on use of exceptions” (the gift/solicitation rule Hawley cited)

• OMB — Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (proposed rule)

Drugs that don’t work for COVID

• The Lancet — Learning from a retraction (the Surgisphere hydroxychloroquine retraction)

• Naggie et al., JAMA 2022 — Effect of ivermectin vs placebo on time to sustained recovery in outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 (ACTIV-6)

• JAMA 2023 — At a higher dose and longer duration, ivermectin still not effective against COVID-19

Thank you , , , , , and many others for joining! See you for the recap.

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I am currently attending the American Society for Virology annual meeting. Although I normally love catching up with friends and seeing the latest research in my field, I had a lot of anxiety about coming here. I have been struggling with a mystery medical condition and have really struggled to keep up my academic commitments, particularly those requiring travel. I had a visit from what I’ve started to call the vomit fairy last night and it knocked me out all morning today. I made it to the afternoon sessions and saw some really cool Ebola and Marburg research, but that was all I could manage. I had to prematurely abort a glass of wine with a colleague and very dear friend to rest before 7 pm. My conference game is not what it used to be. But I’m really glad that I did, because it’s given me fresh resolve to fight the existential threat faced by both American virology and American democracy.

I have devoted my life and career to virology, as did Anthony S. Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). I went into virology because I thought I could make a real scientific contribution that would save lives and make the world a safer and healthier place. Fauci was one of many who inspired me to pursue this work, because I thought he did it for the same reasons I wanted to. Like Fauci, I also received a Jesuit education that emphasized both intellectual rigor and acts of service. I am doing what I am doing now due to what I consider my moral obligation to serve both my field and my country.

Perhaps that is what has led us and our nation to this terrible place: many people do not critically consider the actual evidence anymore and current leadership would like to make cruel selfishness a core American value. I’m getting midnight visits from the vomit fairy, Fauci is being prosecuted, and the spectrum of damage it has inflicted on all my colleagues is too much for a short post about tomorrow’s first show trial of the new McCarthyist era. I will be covering it and fact-checking claims made in real time, so please join me here at 8:15 am ET! I’ll post the recording and transcript after if you’d prefer to start your day with less negativity, but please do check it out.

Every American needs to know what the stakes are here. This is not about just Tony Fauci or virology or science or public health. This is about every single American and our civil liberties.

New Season of Prosecute Fauci About to Drop

Tomorrow morning, Fauci will be dragged before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee HSGAC) by Rand Paul. Paul hates Fauci, ever since Fauci called him a liar in a HSGAC hearing from 2021. That’s because Paul accused Fauci of funding gain of function virology research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Gain of function research in this context refers to research that makes viruses more transmissible and/or pathogenic in humans.

Paul accused Fauci of approving research to create novel SARS-related coronavirus chimeras (two viruses spliced together) and this violated the NIH pause on gain of function work. However, the work in question did not meet NIH’s definition (as Fauci and many experts have consistently stated, including me). The truth did not deter Paul from indirectly accusing Fauci of funding gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that started the pandemic.

Fauci called that exactly what it is: a lie.

I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports and that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible that those viruses caused the pandemic.

-Anthony S. Fauci, HSGAC testimony, July 20, 2021

This did not improve relations with Paul, and consequently he has made ending Fauci a personal vendetta and obsession. They have since sparred in other HSGAC meetings, causing Paul to attack more and more of my colleagues. Paul is incensed that on his way out of office, President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci preemptively, along with some members of his family and the January 6th committee who he correctly anticipated would be persecuted by the new administration. Despite a bunch of nonsense about autopens, presidential pardons can’t be overturned. The Trump administration certainly doesn’t want them to be, considering Trump loves issuing pardons transactionally, dispensing them to his cronies and political allies for his own advantage. So they have to find another work-around.

One possibility might be to get Fauci to commit a “crime” that is outside the window of the pardon. Like lying to HSGAC tomorrow. Only problem with that is to charge someone with perjury, they have to actually lie under oath. Fauci has never lied to HSGAC about gain of function research, the nature of the research his institute funded, or anything else.

I am confident about that because I have studied emerging coronaviruses since 2013. I’ve worked in multiple containment labs. I’ve cloned viruses and done the type of research Paul claims is illegal. I worked on MERS-CoV and flu during the moratorium from 2014-2017 on some types of respiratory virus research, because my research wasn’t subject to it. It was not a broad gain of function ban, nor does Paul define the term gain of function accurately. I am deeply familiar with US regulations and oversight for risky virology research. Fauci is correct that the moratorium didn’t apply to the work Paul implies is gain of function. Fauci is correct that it is impossible for any of the NIAID-funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to become SARS-CoV-2.

Now, with an assist from Tulsi Gabbard, he hit Fauci with a subpoena and is going to attempt to say that he lied about starting the pandemic. I wrote about this for Zeteo last week.

Zeteo

Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci – Part 1: The Smear Campaign

Note from our Editor-in-Chief…

Read more

15 days ago · 320 likes · 49 comments · Dr. Angela Rasmussen

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protects us against being charged with made-up crimes. That’s what this is. It is a made-up crime. I felt so strongly about this that I wrote a SECOND piece at Zeteo about it.

Zeteo

Tulsi, Trump, and the War on Fauci – Part 2: The 'Lab Leak' Obsession

Editor’s note: This is the second piece in a two-part, in-depth series about the Trump administration’s obsession with trying to imprison Anthony Fauci. In Part 1, leading virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen looked at the most ridiculous accusations made against Fauci. In Part 2 below, she dives into the much hyped “lab leak” theory that Donald Trump and his allies are obsessed with - and that doesn’t add up. If you’re not already a…

Read more

14 days ago · 299 likes · 23 comments · Dr. Angela Rasmussen

What to expect

I have no idea. For all I know, Fauci will plead the fifth every time. I’m not a lawyer and can’t say what the best approach is for him legally. But I do think Paul and the Republicans will all take turns repeating Paul’s lies about the evidence about pandemic origins and Fauci’s role in it and many of my colleagues and friends’s supposedly conspiring to cover it up. Paul and Gabbard’s “evidence” depends on you believing that evidence proves anything about Fauci’s conduct or the origins of the pandemic. It depends on you holding a human being—sure, a flawed, imperfect, politically savvy human with a big ego who made mistakes over the course of a four-decade career but also did tremendous good. The research Fauci funded at NIAID has led to vaccines and drugs that have saved millions of lives and counting. I wouldn’t be here in this capacity without it. NIAID funded the training grant to my department for my PhD, my postdoctoral fellowship, and eventually my own lab, just like most of my American colleagues. NIAID research is a big part of why every dollar spent at NIH delivers a 2.5X return to the American economy. Or used to, before so many fewer dollars are being spent these days.

The only thing I expect for sure is lots of propaganda. MAHA Action has recruited Steve Bannon and an all-star lineup of anti-vaxxers to declare victory in the quest to punish Fauci. This is the secondary campaign to the primary campaign Paul waged for years.

No matter what this pit of vipers hisses, Fauci’s contributions are demonstrably net positive—but unfortunately Paul and virtually everyone in the MAGA universe has ignored them to focus on propaganda instead. The public needs to know that they are being lied to, and anyone who accepts the lies does so contrary to their own self-interest.

I will discuss several things no matter what:

• What is the evidence that it came from the market, not the lab?

• What research did Fauci fund and why is Rand Paul wrong about it being gain-of-function?

• Why is “molecularly impossible” for any of these viruses starting the pandemic?

• What was the relationship between US scientists and the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

• What is the deal with the Proximal Origin paper?

• But their Slack messages…

• What does Rand Paul’s diary show? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t show. This:

  

See you at 8:15 am ET tomorrow, then stay tuned for a live recap with afterward. Incidentally, for all of those “science shouldn’t be political” types, I agreed to serve as SAM Science Chair because they are a non-partisan organization that believes it’s not about left and right, but about wrong and right. It’s essential to stand up for what’s right, even if it’s not easy.

It is wrong for elected officials to lie to the American people for political advantage. It is wrong to use political power to exact revenge. It is wrong to prosecute people who haven’t committed a crime. Please subscribe to me and to follow this. I promise to continue trying to make things more right than wrong.

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BONUS READING ASSIGNMENT FROM PROFESSOR RASMUSSEN:

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee joined last week’s job fair on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a two-for-one confirmation hearing. HELP assembled to interview Sean G. Kaufman for Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (both called ASPR) and Dr. Erica Schwartz for the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Leading up to this, this hearing seemed as though it would be comparatively tame. It wasn’t going to be as big of a story as Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche, who accidentally admitted to being President Donald Trump’s personal attorney in his own concurrent confirmation hearing and now has to meet with the Epstein survivors before he can earn the votes of primaried or retired Republicans who no longer have to please Trump. I didn’t think the HELP confirmations would be as eventful as that.

HELP Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), also a primaried Republican, and the Democrats had other ideas. They exposed that Schwartz and Kaufman are not actually qualified and that became abundantly clear in this confirmation hearing. Both nominees lied and misled the HELP committee and the American people in their testimony. So here’s a reality check.

CDC Director nominee Erica Schwartz

The CDC Director is in charge of the many agencies that comprise our national public health agency. CDC has been severely damaged by employee attrition from the reductions in force (RIFs), firings, and people retiring or leaving the agency. Leadership of the many centers that make up the CDC is gone. Prior CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after 29 days on the job for refusing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s demand that she approve vaccine policy that was both harmful to Americans and unsupported by evidence. Three other members of leadership resigned in protest. This was less than three weeks after the CDC was subjected to a terror attack by Patrick White, who was seeking revenge for a vaccine injury that Kennedy’s propaganda led him to believe he suffered. He fired 500 bullets into multiple federal buildings while public servants sought cover. DeKalb county police officer and Marine Corps veteran David Rose was killed trying to protect the CDC employees before White killed himself. Kennedy didn’t acknowledge the attack for more than a day. Trump still has never acknowledged that a domestic terrorist radicalized by the HHS Secretary’s anti-vax lies attacked a government agency and killed a police officer. Including in this informational graphic the White House put out yesterday assuring Americans that they are cracking down on “anti-government attacks” that only come from Trump’s political opposition.

Since Monarez was fired, businessman, organ commercialization proponent, and Peter Thiel protege Jim O’Neill and then National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya served as Acting CDC Director. They did what Monarez would not: rubber stamping Kennedy’s agenda without drawing too much attention to the destruction inflicted on CDC in the process. The CDC Director position is a thankless and impossibly difficult one.

Schwartz served as Deputy Surgeon General in the first Trump administration and rose to the rank of 2-star admiral during her career in the uniformed services. She served in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the Navy, and the Coast Guard. She is a board-certified occupational medicine physician, with law and public health degrees. Her record is outstanding and she is highly qualified. In her military roles, she implemented and enforced vaccine mandates. She is demonstrably pro-immunization in her professional life up to this point. Going into this hearing, I thought Erica Schwartz sounded too good to be true. Why would this administration choose a CDC Director who was pro-vaccine and enforced mandates for the military? We found out in this hearing: Schwartz was too good to be true, because she said things that were neither good nor true.

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ASPR nominee Sean G. Kaufman

The ASPR has a more specialized job than the CDC Director. It is, however, extremely important to both health and national security. ASPR is focused on preparedness and capacity, which means having the ability to respond to anything: terror attacks, natural disasters, pandemics, nukes, cyberattacks, whatever. ASPR makes sure the systems are backed up and can be repaired and there are enough hospital beds with enough staff and enough supplies and we’re ready for it. This is a very challenging logistics job because ASPR has been slashed and burned as hard as much of the rest of the government.

Kaufman is a LinkedIn superfan, especially for promoting his business in the context of Trump-aligned bullshit about security and repeating the usual anti-vax fiction about the pandemic: lockdowns, mandates, school closures, and general Biden-inflicted public health tyranny. His LinkedIn is lively, if you enjoy anti-vax lockdown fiction with your professional networking social media.

Kaufman does seem to have a fair amount of experience. He worked at CDC and Emory, as well as his safety training consulting business. Normally, this might qualify someone to serve as ASPR, although preparedness is about a lot more than biosafety. He seems well-regarded enough that when I asked colleagues in the high containment community who have worked with him before about him he was described as resoundingly “okay.”

He told the New York Times’ Donald McNeil in October 2014 that he was on the team that treated Ebola patients Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol at Emory University’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit. Yesterday, he told HELP: “I led preparedness efforts for the Emory University Ebola Treatment Unit, which cared for the first Ebola patients treated in the United States… and deployed to Liberia and Nigeria.”

But per his beloved LinkedIn, by the time the first Ebola patients arrived at Emory, Kaufman had already left the unit.

Kaufman testified to the House Oversight Committee in July 2014 about an accidental lab release of infectious anthrax at CDC that he left the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit in February and moved to the Emory Environmental Health and Safety Office. As Director of Safety Training Programs, he’s involved with designing and carrying out lab safety training. It’s an important job, but it’s not part of a clinical response team caring for Ebola patients. You better hope people are already trained. He didn’t mention Ebola, because this was two weeks before Brantly and Writebol were infected.

He’s mentioned on the case reports in the New England Journal of Medicine as a member of the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (a large collection of authors), which suggests contribution outside of a leading role. He could not have “led” any meaningful part of the clinical care. He is not a clinician and has no expertise in treating Ebola patients outside of teaching people how to safely don and doff PPE and follow biosafety protocols. He was long gone from primarily working in the containment unit by the time any Ebola patients arrived.

“I led preparedness efforts for the Emory University Ebola Treatment Unit” means that at some point in the past he led safety trainings for the people who actually did treat these patients (I confirmed that directly with a colleague). Framing it as leadership in an emergency response invites the audience to imagine something other than a guy quizzing you about chemical hazards and showing you how to check the airflow on your PAPR.

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How did they fail the interview? Let me count the ways

Both Schwartz and Kaufman came out of the gate saying all the right things in their opening statements. They praised vaccines. Kaufman repeated “safe and effective” at least 3 or 4 times in his opening statement. Schwartz has administered many vaccines in the course of her career and noted that she set up drive-through sites for “testing nearly 11.5 million individuals” as Deputy Surgeon General. Both started off talking a good game, but the second the questions started, things got less coherent than one of Sean Kaufman’s LinkedIn essays.

Schwartz and Kaufman have different backgrounds and both appear qualified (sort of, in Kaufman’s case) for their roles. But both of them came to the hearing very obviously coached extensively in how to mislead and obfuscate, when they weren’t being dishonest outright. They are not the kind of proactive, openly deranged extremists that Kennedy previously has attempted to install throughout the government. They are the newer, more palatable breed of MAHA minion slowly taking over at HHS. Wild, aggressively anti-vax propaganda isn’t hitting with the voters who coincidentally also are overrun by measles in many places, so they are installing people who will still destroy public health, just without any clownish showboating for anyone to notice.

Schwartz and Kaufman revealed their intentions to do exactly that.

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Neither would say that vaccines don’t cause autism (they don’t)

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked Schwartz if she would remove the lies that Kennedy put on the CDC’s website stating that “the claim that ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.”

This was all over the news because it was both egregious and a slap in the face to Cassidy, who cast Kennedy’s deciding confirmation vote based on his promise not to be anti-vax. Kennedy did keep his promise in the form of this asterisk:

Schwartz was unaware of all of this, so Sanders pressed her on whether she accepted the evidence showing that vaccines do not cause autism. She acknowledged that she did, but claimed that we still need to “find the cause” of autism rather than say she would take the website down. The cause of autism is complex—and autism is itself extremely complex and not a single condition—but it is known to be largely driven by genetics. Schwartz’s claim that the cause of autism is unknown is a lie.

Kaufman has previously tied vaccines to autism—naturally—in several fairly deranged LinkedIn posts. Cassidy laid into Kaufman for his views on the hepatitis B vaccine (HBV) birth dose, who protested, “that’s a mischaracterization… I never tied it directly to the infant dose.” Notably, Kaufman did not say that vaccines don’t cause autism or how his remarks were mischaracterized.

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The CDC Director nominee wouldn’t commit to refusing unscientific orders from Kennedy and Trump

Schwartz generally would not give a straight answer to almost every question about her position on vaccines or public health, instead defaulting to old Coast Guard and Navy stories. Although Schwartz told many stories of her historical success implementing vaccine mandates and said she will impose and enforce vaccine requirements based on the evidence, she failed repeatedly to answer the most important question: would you refuse to comply with an order that would harm the American people?

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked directly whether she’d refuse an order to halt vaccine campaigns during a deadly flu season, as actually occurred with the CDC’s “Wild to Mild” campaign. Sanders previously released emails between now-fired or resigned CDC officials and Kennedy and his minions at HHS, so this is established fact. Schwartz replied that she doesn’t speak in hypotheticals, despite Hassan telling her clearly that this had happened in fact.

Hassan asked Schwartz directly: “Are you going to protect our kids, or are you going to follow an uninformed order from the secretary?” Schwartz responded by that she would “always, always protect our children.” She notably would not commit to not following unscientific orders, even when directly asked if she would do so.

She also defended Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s directive to eliminate flu vaccine mandates for military recruits by citing 35–57% effectiveness, despite the fact that it resulted in an off-season flu outbreak . Although it is true that flu vaccine effectiveness varies from year to year, even 35% effectiveness results in demonstrably fewer hospitalizations and deaths. She also omitted mentioning the death during a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas that occurred as a direct result of Hegseth’s policy.

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The ASPR nominee would “rather perish” than give his kids COVID shots

Of all the bullshit excuses for posting essay-length diatribes against vaccines and public health measures disguised as professional networking posts, Kaufman came up with a very stupid one when Sanders asked him why he said he’d “rather perish” than give his kids the COVID vaccine.

Kaufman said that he posted this seven paragraph attack on vaccines and ode to his own virtues as a courageous mandate-hating public health professional because he had just taken his kids to the Kroger for an antibody test and was completely shook by the results. All three of his kids had antibodies (meaning they previously had COVID), so when it came to vaccines, “the risk-benefit equation for my children didn’t exist.” Thus, Kaufman thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to choose death over vaccinating his kids because he is incompetent at risk analysis and is a safety training guy, not a physician.

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The ASPR nominee thinks the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose is for pedophiles and causes autism

Last year, Kaufman published his LinkedIn magnum opus asserting that anyone who thinks babies need the HBV birth dose must be a pedophile because they are planning on engaging in “risky sexual behaviors” with newborn infants. He also claimed in this essay that hepatitis B vaccines cause autism (they don’t).

He assumed a very different tone with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who is well aware of my uncle Brian McMahon’s work with Public Health Service, the CDC, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. McMahon showed in 1985 that household transmission unrelated to sex or injected drugs was common. McMahon and his colleagues eliminated HBV by providing universal HBV vaccination to Alaska Native communities previously devastated by the highest rates of hepatitis B in the country and children dying of liver cancer. As of last year, there had been no cases of hepatitis B or hepatocellular carcinoma in Alaska Native communities since 1993. At the hearing, Kaufman proudly told Murkowski that all three of his children had the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

Cassidy knows this as well, since he is a board-certified hepatologist. Cassidy confronted him, asking “why would you spread those damn lies?” He told Cassidy that he deleted this LinkedIn post because it was “a mischaracterization.” I suppose it is a mischaracterization, since he gave it to all three of his children, didn’t mention any of them being autistic, and presumably he’s not admitting to pedophilia. Cassidy didn’t buy that either, asked Kaufman if he understood the difference between causation and association (Kaufman: “one hundred percent”), and proceeded to demolish Kaufman’s essay with an analogy about how a patient he vaccinated got pregnant shortly afterward, even though the vaccine was obviously not the baby daddy.

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The ASPR nominee sure has confusing views on mRNA vaccines

Unsurprisingly, a guy who would rather die than vaccinate his children against COVID-19 and thinks that newborn immunization is for pedos supports Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in mRNA vaccine research funded through NIH and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

BARDA develops countermeasures for biological threats, including vaccines. mRNA vaccine technology is revolutionary in part because it can allow rapid, population-scale production of vaccines. We witnessed this in action during Operation Warp Speed. So hearing about Kaufman’s plans for BARDA and mRNA vaccines is kind of important, considering the ASPR is in charge of the Strategic National Stockpile.

Kaufman thinks BARDA is great, but he thinks that $500 million is better spent elsewhere because these studies were for “old” viruses. They are actually pan-coronavirus and universal flu vaccines, as well as new delivery formulations to improve effectiveness.

At the same time that he’s worried about “old” viruses, he thinks mRNA technology is too new to be trusted, claiming falsely that “the COVID mRNA vaccine was the only mRNA platform in human health ever used… the first time it was ever used.” mRNA vaccines had been tested extensively in clinical trials prior to the pandemic, which is what enabled Operation Warp Speed to occur over 10 months. We already had a ton of data on mRNA vaccines well before the pandemic. The COVID vaccines were the first vaccines to be licensed, but they weren’t the first time they were used. I find it concerning that the person trying to be America’s administrator of strategic preparedness and response doesn’t know fundamental facts about a technology platform that he also admits is safe, effective, and essential for strategic preparedness and response.

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The CDC Director nominee knows nothing about the CDC or anything else, really

Schwartz hasn’t been keeping up with the news, especially not news about the agency she’s hoping to direct or any of the diseases she’ll be responsible for controlling and preventing. When Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked whether she agreed with Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in combined funding to NIH and BARDA for mRNA vaccines, Schwartz said “this is the first time I'm actually hearing about this as a private citizen. I certainly was not following that.”

Schwartz seemingly has not been following much as she’s luxuriated in the ignorance that life as a private citizen offers. She is especially unaware of what her prospective boss has been up to. She didn’t know that Kennedy had ordered the CDC to put information falsely suggesting a link between vaccines and autism on its website, despite this being huge national news when it occurred last year.

She had no idea that Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with a bunch of anti-vaxxers. She didn’t know about the changes they made to vaccine policy and would need to look into it. She would need to look into everything and talk to CDC scientists before committing to anything, because as a private citizen, she has no way of getting any information about the CDC besides the news that they are hiring.

However, she didn’t know that the CDC workforce has been slashed by a quarter, nor that Kennedy had installed anti-vaxxers throughout. She wouldn’t commit to removing them because she was so completely uninformed about everything that has happened at the CDC in the past year and a half. She didn’t know that Susan Monarez was fired by Kennedy for refusing to sign off on vaccine policies that would put millions of American lives at risk.

She didn’t know that cyclospora is causing explosive diarrhea among more than 7,000 American salad eaters, or that downgrading surveillance programs has hampered our ability to effectively respond. When Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) asked her to commit to prion disease surveillance (“mad cow” disease and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk), she said that she’d need to look into capacity at CDC, which she currently has no idea about. Husted was describing the CDC National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University. CDC also maintains its own prion unit, whose status is now tenuous amid the cuts.

She didn’t know that the CDC Office on Smoking and Health had been shuttered until Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told her, despite smoking cessation being one of her stated interests. She told Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) that she hadn’t been following the US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The only thing she knows is that the CDC is hiring and Trump wants our immunization policy to be more Danish, so she’ll look into it. She’ll commit to a “deep dive” on all the issues she knows nothing about, but she won’t commit to doing the right thing.

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The CDC Director nominee rejects reality

Susan Monarez testified before the HELP committee with Debra Houry, the former CDC Chief Medical Officer, who resigned in protest over Monarez’ firing. Houry shared emails that document Kennedy’s actions in detail. These are demonstrated facts. Schwartz went before the HELP committee, was presented with evidence of these facts, and said she didn’t believe such a thing could occur.

When Sanders and Hassan both directly pressed her on whether she would refuse an unscientific or illegal order, Schwartz pretended none of this was true: “I don’t think the secretary or the president would do what you just said.”

It’s also a Trump regime loyalty test. She passed with flying colors. I wonder what she’d say if she was asked who won the 2020 election.

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Just following orders!

At no point did Schwartz commit to challenging superiors in any way, even when asked directly by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Baldwin brought up Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought’s proposed rule changes that would give him vast control of the entire federal budget, including the power to terminate grants, programs, and employees based on political alignment. Vought is a science-hating Christofascist who was an author of Project 2025 and probably thinks Gilead was too DEI. Considering he laid waste to the CDC last October during the government shutdown and has a stated goal of wanting to “traumatize” the federal workforce, this is a real concern for the CDC Director. Baldwin asked Schwartz to “convince me you’ll push back,” and Schwartz just gave a canned answer about restoring trust.

Cassidy went even harder and actually managed to get Schwartz to invoke the Nuremberg defense via a convoluted story about procurement drama for electronic health records. Cassidy asked Schwartz directly for a concrete example of a time that she told a superior “that they were wrong and that you would not carry out that order.” Schwartz told a very boring tale of how she wanted the Coast Guard to use the Department of Defense’s system instead of developing their own, but the Coast Guard did not take her advice and $60 million later, they still don’t have a decent system. Cassidy correctly wondered where she stood up to a superior in this story. Schwartz’s answer was the straight out of the Nazi war criminal playbook: “I disagreed in private.”

In other words, Schwartz plans to do as she is told, even if she disagrees. She’ll be sure to keep that disagreement “private.” After all, she doesn’t think Trump or Kennedy would ever even ask her to do something unscientific or illegal.

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The point of it all

Normally it would be unusual that a highly accomplished, demonstrably qualified candidate like Erica Schwartz would be so unprepared for the most consequential job interview of her career. But then I remember that the job has changed. The White House no longer wants the CDC Director to control or prevent diseases or the ASPR to administer strategic preparedness and response.

These jobs are all the same across the government: destroy the existing agency, rip out government function at the root, and replace it with an Orwellian simulacrum of American democracy. Directors and Administrators have a single goal: destroy what’s left and replace it with autocracy and corruption.

Schwartz and Kaufman were both grilled about personnel decisions and their intent to spend money as directed by Congress, which Kaine explicitly stated was required by the Appropriations clause of the US Constitution. They both would commit to “following the law.” Schwartz would not commit to removing political staff or opposing future cuts. She said she was “all in on the Make America Healthy Again agenda,” which may be the only time she did say something truthful about her intent.

Both Schwartz and Kaufman are just the new variation of the same servile collaborators that Kennedy has installed throughout HHS: they are qualified on paper but they will not carry out the jobs that they are qualified to do. They will still carry out the same devastating agenda. They will just be less obviously crazy while doing so.

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Dishonesty is Disqualifying: Tell Your Senator NO on Erica Schwartz and Sean Kaufman

The Trump administration has struggled to advance nominees past the HELP Committee. Ever since Cassidy cast the deciding vote that advanced Kennedy to Senate confirmation, he’s been regretting it, even if he won’t admit it. Bad move to do this, considering he still was primaried by a Trump-backed Louisiana Republican whose campaign is managed by the former Principal Deputy Director of the CDC.

Since Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died a week ago and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is indefinitely hospitalized, the Republicans have a serious problem. Although neither Graham nor McConnell is on HELP, their absence means that they can’t afford many other Republicans to vote no. Everyone should call their Senators, particularly if your Senator is on the HELP committee. Tell them that Erica Schwartz and Sean Kaufman’s dishonesty is disqualifying.

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U.S. Capitol Switchboard

(202) 224-3121

https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

If you live in these states, call your Senator on HELP!

Alabama: Tommy Tuberville: (202) 224-4124
Alaska: Lisa Murkowski: (202) 224-6665
Colorado: John Hickenlooper: (202) 224-5941
Connecticut: Chris Murphy: (202) 224-4041
Delaware: Lisa Blunt Rochester: (202) 224-2441
Florida: Ashley Moody: (202) 224-3041
Indiana: Jim Banks: (202) 224-4814
Kansas: Roger Marshall: (202) 224-4774
Kentucky: Rand Paul: (202) 224-4343
Louisiana: Bill Cassidy: (202) 224-5824
Maine: Susan Collins: (202) 224-2523
Maryland: Angela Alsobrooks: (202) 224-4524
Massachusetts: Ed Markey: (202) 224-2742
Missouri: Josh Hawley: (202) 224-6154
New Hampshire: Maggie Hassan: (202) 224-3324
New Jersey: Andy Kim: (202) 224-4744
Ohio: Jon Husted: (202) 224-3353
Oklahoma: Alan Armstrong: (202) 224-4721
South Carolina: Tim Scott: (202) 224-6121
Vermont: Bernie Sanders: (202) 224-5141
Virginia: Tim Kaine: (202) 224-4024
Washington: Patty Murray: (202) 224-2621
Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin: (202) 224-5653

So hi guys, I’m Angie Rasmussen. We are here to watch the CDC director nomination hearing as well as the ASPR nomination hearing. I’m sorry, I’m a little disorganized this morning because I wasn’t actually going to even do this. I wasn’t feeling super hot today. But you know what, I’m here and we’re ready to go ahead and watch this. Let me just get myself situated here. And I apologize also because I have a little dog who is sitting under my feet and trying to lick me constantly and it’s really annoying. So I’m just trying to get myself together here so that we can go ahead and watch this exciting broadcast of this hearing.

So I don’t know what that was. That was like a roll call. I think for this, the HELP committee for the Senate is meeting today to talk about Dr. Erica Schwartz, who is the nominee for CDC director.

A little history on the CDC director

Just to give you a little history on the CDC director, refresh your memory a bit, perhaps. About a year ago, at the end of August, RFK Jr. fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, who, from everybody’s accounts of this, served in that role for a very short period of time, but served with integrity and was fired because she refused to essentially rubber stamp all of RFK Jr.’s anti-vax bullshit.

So we haven’t had a CDC director since then. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH director, who is a health economist with zero experience in disease outbreak response or anything else that really is within the CDC’s purview other than health economics, and I guess technically epidemiology — Jay Bhattacharya has been serving as the acting director of the CDC, even though technically there is no acting director of the CDC because he was in that role a little too long, and you’re actually not allowed to be in that role forever. But he’s just continued to call himself the acting director of the CDC. So he’s like the acting acting director of the CDC.

Anyways, finally, they found somebody who is just, I mean, really, she seems qualified. She’s not an anti-vaxxer. She doesn’t seem crazy. She’s served in the Coast Guard, has a record of distinguished military service. She seems by all accounts to be highly qualified. She was previously the deputy surgeon general. So, you know, it’s pretty exciting, I think, that we finally are going to have a CDC director. And it’s also pretty exciting that it’s somebody who’s actually competent. So that’s a refreshing change of pace.

And I do think that that is because the CDC is effectively not functional. So it doesn’t, to some degree, matter who’s in charge of it. But I think, you know, for the sake of the midterms and things like that, they are going to want to have a CDC director who most people aren’t going to look at and be like, this person is totally, completely unqualified. That’s where we’re at with the CDC director.

The other guy: Sean Kaufman for ASPR

Now, the other guy that I want to talk about — this is a dual hearing. It is two people. It is Erica Schwartz, the CDC director’s nominee. And then it is a guy named Sean Kaufman, who has a master’s in public health. He’s, I think, kind of a biosafety infection control guy. He’s nominated for the administrator of strategic preparedness and response, so ASPR.

Now, ASPR, a lot of people don’t necessarily know what ASPR is. ASPR is essentially the part of HHS, our health agency, that is prepared for different emergencies. So ASPR maintains, for example, the strategic national stockpile of medications and vaccines. ASPR is critically involved in terms of making sure that we have hospital capacity and making sure that we’re really running our pandemic preparedness plan for the U.S.

Now, this ASPR, this guy, Sean Kaufman, was nominated, and he’s been serving in various sort of like undersecretary or deputy kind of administrator roles in HHS. He doesn’t like vaccines very much, and in the past he has said things like that the HBV, the hepatitis B vaccine — we’re on. Okay, let me get this up here. Last time, we had some sound problems, so do let me know. I’ll be checking the comments today. Take it away, Bill.

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Cassidy and Sanders open

(As the hearing comes in and out over Angie’s sound troubles, she reacts to Chairman Bill Cassidy and Ranking Member Bernie Sanders.)

Indeed. And guess what? That’s what Sean Kaufman, the nominee for ASPR, said. I don’t know, Senator Cassidy — you tell us. You got primaried because of it.

No, we actually did think it was going to spread that widely, Bill. But point taken. No cyclosporiasis. That’s true. And it’s a parasite. I got to say, I kind of like Bill Cassidy. I mean, I don’t like him at all, but when he gets going, he’s got some good moments.

Including vaccines. We’re good. Guess what other vaccines Sean Kaufman doesn’t like? mRNA vaccines. Well, no, that’s not exactly why. It’s because they’re trying to get rid of all vaccines.

Okay, guys, I see that I’m having the same sound problem that I was having before. I’m going to try to fix this. I am trying to fix this, guys. Sorry about this. I hate this, guys. I’m so sorry that the sound is causing so many problems. This is clearly my streaming software, and boy, do I get annoyed with this. I really, really do not like it. I’m going to just try to fix this — automatically adjust mic volume. I think maybe I will turn that off and hopefully that will correct it. I just need to pull up the hearing, and I’m going to try to do it on C-SPAN this time rather than the Senate’s janky website. And this sucks because the part that I want to see the most is the part where Bill Cassidy goes to town on his ass.

(Sound restored — Sanders’ opening statement is in progress.)

Sen. Sanders: …for protecting the well-being of the American people. And that was the reason that she was fired. And Mr. Chairman, what has taken place since that firing? Last year, the United States had the worst measles outbreak in over 30 years, with nearly 2,300 cases reported. We are on track to surpass —

Okay. All right, so that was Bernie in the background talking, and he’s still here. I’m going to try to pull this up right now.

Sen. Sanders: Now, an Ebola outbreak is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, with over 1,900 cases and over 700 deaths reported. It’s the third largest Ebola outbreak ever reported, and no treatment or vaccines exist yet for this strain. [In] the United States, vaccination rates are falling…

Ah, I see. I didn’t share the system audio. That was the problem.

Sen. Sanders: …getting sick and dying from illnesses that vaccines could have prevented. Secretary Kennedy’s response to these crises has been to spread misinformation, fire scientists who disagree with him, and wage an unprecedented war on science and vaccines — vaccines that have saved millions of lives. Mr. Chairman, as you well know, our committee received 250 pages of emails from officials at the CDC and HHS that have confirmed what many of us have feared. These emails have shown that Secretary Kennedy tried to make it more difficult for working families to get vaccines for their children at no cost. He directed CDC staff to pursue the bogus link that vaccines cause autism, a link that has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific and medical community. He has spread misinformation about the largest measles outbreak in the US in over 30 years. And Secretary Kennedy stopped a flu vaccination campaign during a flu season that had killed [thousands of people]… We need people in HHS who have the courage to stand up for science, protect our kids, protect the health and well-being of the American people.

(Watching the chat.) Thank you for the fact that people are on Substack leaving comments giving me tips on how to fix this. I’m watching the chat.

Sen. Cassidy: We should now proceed with opening statements. Dr. Schwartz.

All right. I’m supposed to read your bio. My bad. Whoops. Okay. I’m going to be quiet during this part so that you can hear them. And yes, everybody can hear. All right. Thank you so much, tech support of Substack. You guys are awesome. And despite the fact that I am a systems biologist, I’m actually not very good with computer stuff. So I really, really appreciate all of your help. And like I said, I’m going to shut up now so that we can listen to Bill Cassidy and Erica Schwartz’s opening statement, as well as whatever Sean Kaufman is going to say.

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Schwartz’s opening statement

Sen. Cassidy: She’s board certified in occupational medicine. She served as a Navy occupational medicine physician before joining the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps to serve the Coast Guard in 2005. She served as the Deputy Surgeon General from January 2019 to April 2021. She earned a BS in biomedical engineering and her MD from Brown University, an MPH from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and a JD from the University of Maryland. Thank you for being here, and thank you for your dedication to public health and military service.

Dr. Schwartz: Thank you, Chairman. Chairman, ranking member, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is truly an honor to be nominated for the role of Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I’d also like to thank President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for the trust they placed in me with this nomination… The most important thing to know about me is that I come from a God-fearing military family. My father and my older sister were in the Navy, my older brother was in the Marines, and my younger brother was in the Army. And I had the privilege of serving both in the Navy and with the Coast Guard. For my family, service was not a job. It was a calling, it was a responsibility, and it was an act of faith… I later transferred to the United States Public Health Service and was detailed to the Coast Guard, where I focused on force health protection for responders to major national and global crises, including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, and the West Africa Ebola outbreak… I eventually served as the Coast Guard’s chief medical officer at the rank of two-star admiral… I was later asked to serve as the United States Deputy Surgeon General. During my tenure, our nation faced one of the greatest public health threats in modern history, the COVID-19 pandemic… We established drive-through testing sites in every state, in Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, testing nearly 11.5 million individuals. Public health is in my DNA… If confirmed, my first priority will be restoring trust in public health institutions through radical transparency and unwavering scientific integrity… I will never betray the science. Second, we must modernize the CDC into a near real-time public health enterprise… Third, we must empower states, tribes, local communities, and territorial partners as the operational backbone of American public health… The CDC should provide tools, embedded expertise, operational support, and funding flexibility, not rigid top-down control… Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your questions.

Okay, she sounds pretty good.

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Kaufman’s opening statement

Sen. Cassidy: We are joined by Mr. Sean Kaufman, nominated to be the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR.

Now let’s see what this anti-vaxxer has to say.

Sen. Cassidy: Mr. Kaufman earned his Bachelor of Science and Master of Public Health degrees from San Diego State University with a focus on health promotion and behavioral science. He has 30 years of public health experience with a focus on infectious disease preparedness, biosafety, biosecurity, and emergency response. He has served in leadership roles at CDC, Emory University, and in the private sector… He also founded Safer Behaviors, a firm that delivers behavioral-based training to clients globally. Thank you, sir, for being here. We look forward to hearing from you.

No, we don’t.

Mr. Kaufman: Thank you, Chairman Cassidy, Ranking Member Sanders, and members of the Senate HELP Committee… Most importantly, I thank God and my family. I’m especially grateful to my wife, Jacqueline, my daughter, Jamie Lynn, and my brother, Kevin, who are with us today. I also want to recognize my father, a retired United States Marine Corps officer, my brother, a retired FBI Special Agent, and my son, Aiden, who currently serves as a United States Army aviator flying Black Hawk helicopters… I also want to recognize the extraordinary men and women who protect America’s health every day, some of whom are engaged with Ebola overseas. From ASPR, CDC, all of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, to healthcare systems, laboratories, emergency responders, and organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, these professionals stand between crisis and recovery…

I just have to say that I’m going to have some things to say about this.

Mr. Kaufman: I have dedicated my career to protecting people from biological threats. My work began during the HIV/AIDS pandemic and has included responses to the September 11th and the 2001 anthrax attacks, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and COVID-19. I led preparedness efforts for the Emory University Ebola Treatment Unit, which cared for the first Ebola patients treated in the United States, and deployed to Liberia and Nigeria through the West Africa Ebola epidemic in 2014… I have seen firsthand the life-saving impact of vaccines. Let me be clear, vaccines save lives. They are safe and effective and remain one of the most important tools in public health for preventing infectious diseases and protecting the American people.

Somebody’s been getting some good coaching.

Mr. Kaufman: The threats facing our nation continue to evolve. We must remain prepared for emerging infectious diseases, deliberate biological threats, and increasingly complex challenges driven by advances in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and rapidly changing technologies.

Oh, here we go.

Mr. Kaufman: At the same time, chemical, radiological, nuclear, cyber, and natural disasters are all hazards that require an integrated approach…

Start by not saying “nucular.”

Mr. Kaufman: ASPR exists for one reason, to save lives… My priorities will be straightforward. First, I hope to strengthen and reauthorize PAHPA… Second, I want to accelerate the development of medical countermeasures, which includes vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and other lifesaving capabilities… Third, I want to invest in the people who make preparedness possible: our healthcare workers, emergency responders, laboratorians, public health professionals, and scientists… Fourth, I’d like to modernize how we develop, manufacture, stockpile, and deliver critical medical resources…

Including vaccines?

Mr. Kaufman: And finally, I want to strengthen partnerships across the federal government with our state, local, tribal, and territorial partners… Preparedness is a shared responsibility, and our success depends on working together before a crisis, not simply reacting after one begins.

This fella’s written a lot of grants in his time.

Mr. Kaufman: …If confirmed, I will lead with integrity, urgency, humility, and accountability… Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Well, I look forward to him too, because he’s saying all the right things. But boy, do I doubt his sincerity.

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Cassidy to Schwartz: “Are you going to fire the anti-vaxxers?”

Sen. Cassidy: Dr. Schwartz, your predecessor was let go because she would not make decisions that she felt she was instructed to make that she felt were going to be bad for public health… What commitment will you commit to this committee and to the American people to have the same integrity as she — that if asked to do something which is wrong for public health, that you will stand up as she did, object, if necessary, publicly?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, thank you for the question… I have spent over 25 years in the uniformed services leading by integrity… You are a physician, I’m a physician. We both took the Hippocratic Oath… If I’m confirmed as CDC director, the nation’s health and well-being will take primacy, and I will never compromise on that.

Sen. Cassidy: Now, we know that the Secretary has put people at the CDC who are there basically to look for evidence, however they can find it, in fishing expeditions of how vaccines may cause problems.

Now we’re talking, Bill.

Sen. Cassidy: They can’t find it, but they keep on doing it. Now, have you been told that you will have the ability to reassign people who are underproductive in terms of promoting trust in public health measures which have been shown time and time again to be safe?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, I am sitting here because the president nominated me and the secretary and I had conversations…

Sen. Cassidy: Let me interrupt, I have limited time.

Erica, are you gonna fire them or not?

Sen. Cassidy: Will you have the ability to reassign, demote, get rid of people who are harmful to our public health venture based upon the scientific knowledge that is generally known…?

Pretty rich for Bill to say that, though, considering he really pulled punches for a long time until he was sure that he got primaried.

Dr. Schwartz: …absolutely will allow me to be the CDC director. That is why I’m sitting here before you.

Are you going to fire the anti-vaxxers, Erica? You can be CDC director and just take orders.

Sen. Cassidy: We need a CDC director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization.

It’s pretty important considering the last CDC director got fired for that.

Sen. Cassidy: …thousands of kids hospitalized because people have promoted that immunization is bad, and now kids have died because of it. It is evil to do that. It is evil. And people persist. You are the bulwark. So I’m asking, will you have the ability and the firmness to stand up to that political meddling to say, no, that’s wrong and this is right?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, you have my assurances that I will continue to lead by my integrity. I will never compromise on science.

Not the answer he was looking for, Dr. Schwartz.

Dr. Schwartz: I will always have the public’s health in mind. I have spent over 25 years making sure that my —

Are you going to fire the anti-vaxxers? I’m just saying that.

Sen. Cassidy: …I believe you’re a woman of integrity. I accept that. But will you have the ability to say no to junk science and to say yes to that which has been firmly established… as opposed to that which is superstition and prejudice?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, I have always stood up for what is right and what is true… I will never betray the science, ever. I will go where the science leads us. I will not have predetermined answers or conclusions. I will make sure that the CDC is focused on scientific rigor, that the CDC is focused on radical transparency, as we discussed in your office.

I don’t like this. She’s using a lot of the MAHA buzzwords.

Dr. Schwartz: The most important thing to regain public trust is that we lead with humility —

Sen. Cassidy: Excuse me, because I’m almost out of time. Radical transparency includes —

Saying whether or not you’re going to fire the anti-vaxxers.

Sen. Cassidy: If somebody puts people beneath you or above you or around you and will not let you remove them, but they are doing wrong things at the CDC pursuing an agenda harmful to America’s public health — and we’ve seen evidence of that, it’s not a theoretical — how will you handle that situation?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, I am not obviously there at the CDC, but you have my assurances that if I am confirmed as CDC director, [I’ll work with] the principal deputy director, Sean Slovensky, who’s already on the ground, and the deputy director, the chief medical officer, Dr. Jennifer Shuford, to have those conversations…

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Sanders: the autism website, and “rather perish”

Sen. Sanders: Dr. Schwartz, thank you very much for your service over the years. According to the American Medical Association, which represents over 270,000 doctors, quote, an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism, end quote.

I don’t think that this woman believes there’s any kind of link between vaccines and autism.

Sen. Sanders: …[more than 40 scientific studies in seven countries] involving over 5 million people [finding] that there is no link. And yet today, the CDC has published false information on its website suggesting that childhood vaccines cause autism. Dr. Schwartz, do you agree the existing scientific evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism? If confirmed, will you commit to removing information on the CDC website suggesting a link between vaccines and [autism]?

Now that’s the right question, Bernie.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, we do not know what causes autism —

No, that’s not true.

Dr. Schwartz: [1 in 33] children have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and we owe it to the American people to figure out why.

We know that it’s because of genetics.

Sen. Sanders: …the evidence is overwhelming. Do you accept that evidence?

You’ve got to be kidding me. Thumbs down on Erica Schwartz, in my opinion.

Dr. Schwartz: I do accept that evidence, Senator.

Sen. Sanders: If confirmed, will you commit to removing information on the CDC website suggesting a link between vaccines and autism?

Dr. Schwartz: If confirmed, Senator, you have my commitment that I will look at that exact website. I have not seen that.

How could you have not seen that when you’re looking for this job? That literally was unbelievably famous and it was addressed by this very committee.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I have been in many situations where I have had to go to my superiors in the military to have very difficult conversations… And I will do the same with the secretary. I will go to the secretary.

Nobody gives a shit that you’re going to talk back to Kennedy. Are you going to take it off the website or not?

Sen. Sanders: …[emails show the] director demanding that, quote, CDC political leadership all have eyes on the decisions for approval, changes before they go into effect, end quote. Within days, the CDC director was fired for failing to approve Secretary Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda. Dr. Schwartz, if confirmed, will you commit that you will report to Congress if you receive directives from Secretary Kennedy or any other individual in the Trump administration to implement policies that are unscientific and could harm the health and well-being of the American people?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I do not believe that the president or the secretary would ever do what you just mentioned.

Really? Really? You don’t think that Trump or Kennedy would do that?

Dr. Schwartz: I do not think that the secretary or the president would ask me to do something like that.

He literally did that with the last CDC director.

Sen. Sanders: Mr. Kaufman, in 2022, you said that, quote, you would rather perish, end quote, than have any of your three children, quote, receive an injection of the COVID vaccine where the risks soundly outweigh the benefits gained, end quote.

Now, here we go with Kaufman.

Sen. Sanders: Is that a true statement?

He thinks vaccines save lives, but not all of them.

Sen. Sanders: And yet in 2021, President Trump called the COVID vaccine, quote, one of the greatest achievements of mankind, end quote.

I don’t usually agree with President Trump. It certainly was a great achievement. I’m right there with you, Bernie.

Sen. Sanders: Was President Trump right?

Mr. Kaufman: Senator, I think we are both right. If I may explain, because I think there have been several things — and Chairman Cassidy alluded to it earlier — that have been mischaracterized…

Oh, I see. It’s a big misunderstanding that I’d rather die than give my kids a COVID vaccine.

Mr. Kaufman: Right before that post, I had taken them to a Kroger, looked at antibodies, and they were all antibody positive for COVID-19. And the risk-benefit equation for my children didn’t exist. However, and this is very important, I want to mention Trish Lawrence. Trish Lawrence is my —

This guy went and got them serologically tested at a Kroger. And his kids had antibodies to COVID.

Mr. Kaufman: …[my wife’s mom, who recently passed away]. And I recommended, not only for Trish Lawrence, but her husband, Frank Lawrence —

So he doesn’t think they need a vaccine, and he’d rather die than give them one.

Mr. Kaufman: …I believe 100% that vaccines are safe and effective —

What the fuck is this story? Trish and Frank Lawrence? Like, what is he talking about?

Mr. Kaufman: …[we should] make a determination on which and what is the best risk-benefit equation for that patient.

But you’re not a doctor. And, like, honestly, if I took my kids to a Kroger to get them antibody tested for COVID and they were antibody positive, meaning they had COVID, I don’t think my first response would be like, I’d rather die than vaccinate them.

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Murkowski: hepatitis B and my uncle Brian

Sen. Murkowski: …Alaska had the highest rate of childhood hepatitis B and hepatocellular carcinoma of any state in the country…

So Lisa Murkowski is also a big fan of the hepatitis B vaccine. My uncle has spoken with her about it on numerous occasions because he is, in fact, a hepatologist who lives in Alaska and eliminated hepatitis B from the Indigenous population there by vaccinating children, including with the universal birth dose, ever since the vaccine was available in the early eighties.

Sen. Murkowski: …through screening and vaccination and sustained universal newborn immunization, they have virtually eliminated [hepatitis B]…

Uncle Brian McMahon — my uncle is who Lisa Murkowski is talking about right now.

Sen. Murkowski: …[a great service] to the American people, especially to the Indigenous communities that were horribly affected by hepatitis, [an] example of the value… Mr. Kaufman, you have made statements previously as it relates specifically to the hepatitis B vaccine. And my question to you this morning is whether you agree that the hepatitis B birth dose remains an important tool for protecting high-burden and rural states such as Alaska.

Mr. Kaufman: Senator, thank you for the question. And to give you an answer other than yes, I will tell you that all three of my children, who I love more than anything, have received the infant dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

Right, because your children are like in their twenties, and 20 years ago it wasn’t a politically important position to be anti-vax.

Mr. Kaufman: Clarifications are important, because you see reference [to risk] unless you are a drug user or sexually [active]…

Sen. Murkowski: …when we’re talking about those vaccines that can be given at birth that can prevent these horrible deaths, I think it needs to be made clear. We get back to the issue of how do we establish public trust here.

Indeed. Although I gotta say, Lisa Murkowski, you do a lot of good talking about this, but when it actually comes to doing it, [she folds].

Sen. Murkowski: …[tribal] communities [rely] on close coordination with ASPR, with the Indian Health Service, Tribal Health Systems, the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps… Mr. Kaufman, how could you envision strengthening ASPR’s partnership with IHS, the tribes, and the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps to ensure that we’re able to respond timely?

Mr. Kaufman: …one of my greatest worries is that emergency responders come in like seagulls. They fly in and then they fly out, and they leave the community with all the issues that they had before… emergency response is local as well… so my plan would be to come in, strengthen existing partnerships, ensure that individuals are empowered to respond…

Like, this is a meaningless answer, though. Like, how do you do that?

Sen. Murkowski: …in delivering the COVID vaccines, where there was that on-the-ground response that really made that difference. Dr. Schwartz.

Just go to Kroger and get an antibody test. Then you don’t need a vaccine, according to this guy.

Sen. Murkowski: …I introduced yesterday a bill entitled the Native Children’s Commission Implementation Act. It directs CDC to improve the quality, accuracy, and completeness of maternal and infant health data for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian populations… I’m just going to ask you, if you are confirmed, to work with us to address some of these longstanding challenges — racial misclassification, underreporting, incomplete data collection…

This is the real problem with Lisa Murkowski. Like, she talks about all this stuff and, like, yes, I agree with you — we do need to do a better job about all of this stuff. But she never, like, really names what the problem is. And right now it’s not just because there’s, like, racism. It’s because of specifically who’s doing the racism, and it’s, like, the government.

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Baldwin: are mRNA vaccines safe and effective?

Sen. Baldwin: Mr. Kaufman, do you believe that mRNA vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, are safe and effective? Yes or no?

He said in his opening statement that he did.

Sen. Baldwin: …The quote is, as a father of three who would rather perish than have any one of his children receive an injection…

Tammy, he was at the Kroger the night before.

Sen. Baldwin: …Dr. Schwartz, do you believe that mRNA vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, are safe and effective?

Yes, she does.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, thank you for meeting with me earlier. I do appreciate that. I will say, for the record, you do have the most beautiful office in the Senate. That being said, I do believe that mRNA —

You’re all welcome. Has she seen everybody’s office?

Dr. Schwartz: …I do believe that mRNA technology is safe and effective.

Sen. Baldwin: …This spring, a study about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines was suppressed within the Department of Health and Human Services…

Podcast J strikes again.

Sen. Baldwin: …Grant awards now undergo a political scrubbing before they are awarded… a recent OMB proposed rule would create a government-wide mechanism requiring political review of every discretionary grant.

Commissars at every agency. Just like in the good old Soviet Union, because we’re communists.

Sen. Baldwin: …and expand the government’s authority to terminate grants on a whim.

This is where Russell Vought, the OMB director, is trying to give himself exclusive control of the entire federal budget, basically, in direct violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. And I hope you all left comments. I certainly did.

Sen. Baldwin: How would you operate in an environment, as I’ve just described, where there is now going to be political scrubbing of every discretionary grant from the agency?

Dr. Schwartz: …restoring trust to the CDC is my number one priority… The first thing that we must do is to go where the science leads us, no matter what… The second thing is radical transparency… When I was in the Coast Guard, I was the medical unit leader in Deepwater Horizon… I had a pilot who came up to me… he asked me, Doc Schwartz, am I gonna get cancer? … The radical transparency that I had to utilize was to tell him that I did not know… what I did tell him was that he was going to be enrolled in a long-term surveillance program… And the third thing that’s critical is leading with humility…

Sen. Baldwin: …in the context of an agency that is suppressing studies and having political scrubbing of grant decisions, that’s going to be a real challenge. I want you to convince me that you are going to be able to push back against those attempts to interfere with radical transparency.

Yeah, sorry, Erica, you’re not going to get away with these great answers.

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Marshall: API, BARDA, and a little lab-leak

Sen. Marshall: …I just want to compliment both of you, two of the most qualified people I’ve seen in front of us. Dr. Schwartz, incredible resume, two-star admiral…

We definitely need an anti-vaxxer in charge of the national stockpile.

Sen. Marshall: …Your motto, stand ready, move fast…

So to be clear, what that means is he does safety training consulting. Exactly what we need to keep Americans safe.

Sen. Marshall: Now, so often this committee seems like all we care about is vaccines. It’s one percent of both of your worlds… There’s concerns about the mRNA technology. It’s short-lived. They don’t stop the virus. There are significant risks associated, especially [with] young males… Are you committed to making sure that America has access to whatever vaccines that you deem safe and worthy?

Mr. Kaufman: …there’s a small organization many may not hear of, an island of excellence called BARDA. And BARDA is responsible… for looking at new technologies, because what we face today is the ability of our adversaries to actually genetically modify organisms, creating novel threats that put Americans drastically at risk, very similar to what we saw with COVID.

What are the odds that you think Sean Kaufman thinks the pandemic started because a US researcher made it at the Wuhan Institute of Virology after funding by Tony Fauci caused it, as Tulsi Gabbard revealed?

Sen. Marshall: Are you committed to getting the vaccines into the hands of doctors and nurses…?

Mr. Kaufman: Absolutely, 100%.

I’m sorry, I know that Roger Marshall thinks it’s a lab leak. There you go.

Sen. Marshall: Dr. Schwartz, I mentioned the API [active pharmaceutical ingredients]. What’s the solution to bring API back home?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I actually have to get smarter on that. I have to be brutally honest here. I haven’t been really following that, but I would definitely love to work with your team.

My guess is she should have met with Roger Marshall in advance of this hearing, I guess.

So the problem here that they’re talking about is, like, making pharmaceutical ingredients, including for biologicals. And Kaufman’s talking about doing this in a way that will, like, fuck up our adversaries.

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Kaine: the glasses game, and the Office on Smoking and Health

I do love Tim Kaine’s glasses game. There’s a certain kind of man who can just really rock that, like, sort of glasses-on-the-forehead look, and Tim Kaine is 100% one of them.

Sen. Kaine: …I’ve come to regret a vote that I cast against a Trump nominee, [Dr. Schwartz’s] predecessor. She was before us and I thought she was very qualified, but I wondered whether she would have the backbone to stand up to political pressure. And she sure did… Your answer was almost exactly the same as hers: I don’t think I’ll ever get asked to do such a thing. Now, that’s kind of a theoretical, hypothetical question. So let me ask one that is not… it deals with tobacco and the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC.

Oh, you mean the office that was, I think, mostly closed?

Sen. Kaine: The entire Office on Smoking and Health was eliminated. This is an office that is in statute and that receives congressional appropriations. But the Trump administration eliminated it, the contractors supporting the office were fired, and the employees have lost their jobs…

And I want people to understand, too, that this is the mechanism by which they’re eliminating this stuff. They eliminate it, they go to court, and maybe it gets added back, but by the time it does, you can’t add it back. Done.

Sen. Kaine: …if confirmed, will you commit to spending congressionally-appropriated dollars for the Office on Smoking and Health… and bring back a sufficient staff infrastructure to make sure that you can carry out the mission for which Congress appropriates funds to the CDC?

Dr. Schwartz: …As a board-certified occupational medicine physician, you are speaking about something that is near and dear to my heart. I ran the health promotion clinic when I was in the Navy… and the number one thing that I focused on was smoking cessation…

Yes, yes, we know. Are you going to open the office back up and spend money on it?

Dr. Schwartz: …You have my assurances that if I am confirmed as the CDC director, I will work with your team and your staff… to understand [why] we are not, in fact, having an office to be active.

I didn’t know that the CDC was saying that autism might be caused by vaccines. I didn’t know that they closed the smoking office. I didn’t know that all this shit was going on.

Sen. Kaine: …once Congress votes for it, it’s the law. And I would just like to know, will you follow the law if we appropriate money for this mission at the CDC?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I will always follow the law.

Sen. Kaine: …You and I had a good visit about the routing of commercial aviation from nations that are experiencing the Ebola outbreak into a few airports, including Dulles…

Well, now there’s been a complete travel ban, so no worries.

Sen. Kaine: …you committed to me in my office that should you be confirmed, you would make sure that the CDC gets to these locations… to have forums and provide information…

Wait, so you’re, like, routing Ebola flights into Dulles, and the CDC isn’t explaining anything about this to people who work at Dulles? (Not that there’s actually a huge risk of Ebola on this flight — it just means a flight from Africa.)

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King: prions, chronic wasting disease, and avian flu

Sen. King: …a question for Dr. Schwartz about something that Ohio has a great connection to, and that is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease…

Creutzfeldt-Jakob, mad cow disease. It’s a rare and always fatal brain disease. Prions are scary. They’re infectious proteins that go in and change the structure of your existing proteins so that they also become prion proteins. You can’t really autoclave them. You’ve got to do it at higher temperatures.

Sen. King: …and that gets me to the next part of this, which is chronic wasting [disease]…

Here we go.

Sen. King: …it’s been detected in over 36 states across the country… we harvest through hunting 200,000-plus deer a year, which people eat… the only way to really do that is through postmortem human brain tissue analysis… I am interested in your reassurance that you will support the center’s postmortem brain tissue analysis capacity…

Dr. Schwartz: …whether it’s CJD or CWD, certainly if I am confirmed as CDC director, I would work with your team to understand what are the capacities of the CDC to look into these types of very rare diseases…

Literally, the CDC does this. They have a branch office at Colorado State University. The CDC itself does research on prion diseases, although chronic wasting disease is currently an animal disease, so that’s actually within the USDA’s portfolio. And they also do surveillance — or at least they used to, before APHIS was gutted by at least a quarter of their workforce.

You know what the CDC also does need to worry about with regard to hunting, and specifically with regard to duck hunting? Avian flu. Also a problem in Ohio. Our bird-flu-infected ostriches here in Canada infected some other wild bird, which made its way to the great state of Ohio.

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Hassan: would you follow an illegal order, and the “wild to mild” campaign

Sen. Hassan: …if the president of the United States instructs you to take an action that would break the law, will you follow the law or follow the president’s instruction? Dr. Schwartz?

Dr. Schwartz: The president would never ask me to not follow the law.

The president would definitely ask you to not follow the law, because he does that all the time. There are multiple examples of the president actively instructing people to break the law. Over and over again. And the president himself breaks the law over and over again. It’s not a satisfactory response to say that.

Sen. Hassan: …If Secretary Kennedy ordered you to stop promoting the flu vaccine during a deadly flu season, would you carry out that order?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, when I was the deputy surgeon general… the Surgeon General had a number of public health campaigns that he wanted to do, and yet we had very limited resources —

Sen. Hassan: Okay, I’m asking you a different question.

Jerome Adams not being able to have the resources to do the Surgeon General campaigns he wanted to do is a very different question than this.

Sen. Hassan: …The flu season last year killed almost 300 children… Nevertheless, in the middle of the deadly flu outbreak last year, Secretary Kennedy personally directed the CDC to immediately stop all promotion of the flu vaccine — the “wild to mild” campaign — campaigns that were already planned and paid for. And the emails about this are straight-up Orwellian. To stop promoting the flu vaccine during a deadly flu season for children — would you carry out that order? Yes or no?

Dr. Schwartz: So, Senator, I don’t speak in hypotheticals —

Sen. Hassan: But this isn’t a hypothetical. It happened. …Are you going to protect our kids, or are you going to follow an uninformed order?

Good for you, Maggie.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I will always, always protect our children.

Sen. Hassan: So you would refuse that order? Yes or no?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, my understanding of what happened back then was that the secretary has various priorities…

Sen. Hassan: I’m sorry, that’s not acceptable… The money was in the budget. It was there and it protects and saves lives. And your answer is really disappointing.

You know, I think Erica Schwartz is probably a really great doctor, probably really great [at] serving the country. She’s trying to do that now because the commander in chief is a prick and a liar and a rapist, and she’s trying to follow his orders.

Sen. Hassan: …when the ACIP makes a very disappointing recommendation regarding vaccines… do you commit that you will consider and make decisions on vaccine recommendations from scientific experts without political interference from outside the chain of command, including Secretary Kennedy or President Trump?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, your premise is interesting. I don’t think the secretary or the president would do what you just said.

The president and the secretary have literally done this. The secretary has interfered with vaccine recommendations to the point that he fired the entire ACIP and replaced them with a bunch of either yes-men or anti-vaxxers. So, yes, he’s done this before.

Dr. Schwartz: …Oh, I’m not aware of that.

I didn’t know that Secretary Kennedy was doing that. I’m going to have to look into that more, says Erica Schwartz.

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Tuberville: monoclonals and a nice big steak

I don’t think she will.

Sen. Tuberville: …every time I hear this man speak I get stupider. …the damn vaccine business, that they want them to take 70 vaccines before they’re two. Seventy vaccines before they’re two years old…

That’s literally, Tommy, what the ACIP and the CDC do. They’re called vaccine recommendations.

Sen. Tuberville: Monoclonal antibodies… it was saving lives. And the Biden administration wouldn’t let you have it unless you had the damn vaccine.

Oh, my God. Okay, that’s not true. The Biden administration did not prevent people from getting access to monoclonal antibodies unless they had the damn vaccine.

Mr. Kaufman: …I had the opportunity to serve at Emory University’s healthcare unit where Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were treated for Ebola during the 2014 epidemic…

Samaritan’s Purse, by the way, which is where Kent Brantly, a doctor who got Ebola in Liberia, worked. Samaritan’s Purse is an organization founded by Franklin Graham, who is the head of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. He’s also the director of Samaritan’s Purse, which is a $1.2-billion-a-year-in-revenue humanitarian aid organization. They do a lot of good work, but I’ve got a Substack coming out about this, so you’re going to want to subscribe to me, because boy, are they not a good organization in terms of, sort of, proselytizing and just general evangelical badness.

Oh, God. You know, I just cannot stand listening to this dude give his entire company’s pitch about how he’s done this or that with monoclonals. “You can’t have these monoclonals unless you take this damn vaccine.” That is just not true. That’s quite simply untrue.

Sen. Tuberville: …how are you going to get trust back into our country through your position? Because my state of Alabama, they don’t trust HHS. They don’t trust the federal government.

I don’t blame them. It’s because you guys are constantly lying about [everything].

Mr. Kaufman: …maybe during COVID we didn’t have necessarily the best showing in public health —

What are you fucking talking about? It wasn’t perfect, but, like, literally we developed vaccines within ten fucking months. And you know what? I’m not going to put an asterisk, because Trump did that. That was amazing. Millions of people around the world took those vaccines and did not suffer.

Mr. Kaufman: …With any medical intervention, there will always be adverse events —

No shit.

Mr. Kaufman: …And it basically erodes trust when we choose to write them off —

We’ve literally never written them off. Literally, ACIP discusses myocarditis at every single meeting — every single meeting of the COVID work group, back when at least ACIP was competent.

Sen. Tuberville: …Secretary Kennedy and I, we share the same desire about nutrition… I like to eat me a nice big steak… what role are you going to be playing in the CDC with helping us have good food that’s safe for us?

Dr. Schwartz: …I am all in on the Make America Healthy Again agenda… they have introduced nutrition education in medical school…

This is the dumbest thing. We did not have nutrition education [in my day]. Us doctors thought that you could just eat Snickers bars and shit all day long. I definitely know all kinds of doctors with super unhealthy eating habits because they never took nutrition in medical school.

At least she didn’t do the “food is medicine” thing.

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Kim: CDC morale, and the WHO withdrawal

Sen. Kim: …I’m hearing from many across our government, but a lot at the CDC, about low morale, especially after the big cuts last year. How are you going to try to rebuild…?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, thank you… When I think about trust, I always think about a particular instance in my career. I was the HIV program manager in the Coast Guard, and I had to tell a young Coast Guard [member]…

Sen. Kim: I’m asking about specific to the CDC. What are you going to do in your first [days]?

I’m so sick of these Coast Guard stories. Talk about your fucking job.

Sen. Kim: Will you oppose future large-scale cuts to CDC personnel?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, what I’ve learned through the news — I’m a private citizen here — is that the CDC is actually hiring more people…

In other words, when Russell Vought tells me to find more people to cut, I sure will. And I’ll then replace them with his politically selected, approved censors to make sure that the CDC isn’t doing any ideologically impure research.

Sen. Kim: …the withdrawal that the Trump administration set forward from the World Health Organization — makes the American people more or less safe globally?

Dr. Schwartz: I haven’t heard about that. I think the World Health Organization does amazing things. But I also agree with President Trump that it was incredibly bureaucratic…

Literally, Trump has no idea what the World Health Organization does.

Dr. Schwartz: …the President and Secretary Rubio have something called the America First Global Health Strategy…

Yeah, it’s called bilateral agreements that allow the U.S. to shake other countries down as convenient. It’s called a travel ban.

Sen. Kim: So you think we’re better off now than we were a year and a half ago?

I think Erica Schwartz sucks. Thumbs down. I’d vote no.

Dr. Schwartz: …we are 40 trillion in debt and the president has asked us [to cut]…

Gee, what did we spend that 40 trillion on? It’s going to kill thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding countries.

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Banks: pandemic guidance, and “politicals” at the CDC

Sen. Banks: …the CDC revised its guidelines on mask wearing, social distancing, and quarantine over and over again… What internal safeguards exist [so] that the CDC would prevent misleading public [guidance]?

Dr. Schwartz: …the first order of business for me is to really do a listening session with the CDC career scientists…

They love doing these listening sessions. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea in this case.

Dr. Schwartz: …the one thing that is very concerning to me is that internally to the CDC, there is a breakdown in trust between the career scientists and the politicals.

Oh, gee, I wonder why.

There didn’t really used to be politicals at the CDC. I mean, the high-up leadership positions at the CDC are necessarily political, but domestically they were still people who were qualified to do those jobs. It’s a politically challenging job, I guess, to be the CDC director, but it’s still not a career politician who’s getting that job. It’s somebody who’s actually a doctor, somebody who’s actually qualified to do that.

Dr. Schwartz: …I do not want to have a CDC that is a rigid, top-down CDC. I want to work with our state partners to understand what are the things that we can do better.

This is how public health works. I would say that the way that CDC could be better is by being functional. And unfortunately, if she’s not going to hire people, she’s not going to replace the expertise that’s been lost from the CDC — which I don’t think she can do.

She’s talking about being a CDC director in a fantasy world where President Trump is dignified and actually doing a great job all the time, where Kennedy is not an insane, like, animal-cutting-up, like, falconry-loving anti-vaxxer and eugenicist. This woman is talking about things like they’re just completely normal. She’s like that dog that’s sitting in the flaming room drinking a fucking cup of coffee.

Sen. Banks: Many of our emergency management officials in state and local government are really frustrated with FEMA… What is CDC’s proper role in assisting states with natural disasters?

Well, I can see why they’re frustrated with FEMA, because FEMA’s been cut to shit. Like, FEMA’s not assisting states, so that’s what the problem is.

Dr. Schwartz: The CDC should be taking a supporting role… the CDC should not be coming in with our sharp elbows telling the states what to do —

The CDC literally does not do that. States invite the CDC to come to their states when they are having problems. The real problem under Kennedy — and this has been reported extensively, including by my friend and colleague Amy Maxmen for KFF Health News — is that the Texas state health department could not get in touch with the CDC during their measles outbreak. They were asking the CDC for help and the CDC didn’t answer the phone.

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Alsobrooks: flu mandates, adenovirus, Aaron Siri, and vitamin K

Sen. Alsobrooks: …The notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member everywhere in every circumstance at all times is just overly broad and not rational. So Dr. Schwartz, do you agree with Secretary Hegseth [that] a flu vaccine mandate [is] irrational?

Dr. Schwartz: …I spent over 25 years in the uniformed services and I have had my share of making the mandates for influenza and other vaccines — or at least following [them]…

Yeah, I was going to say she made the mandate for those vaccines. She’s a mandate maker.

Dr. Schwartz: …when you’re in congregate living situations, when you’re on submarines, when you’re on ships, close quarters, it is really important to make sure that you have what we call force health protection…

The influenza vaccine was invented by Jonas Salk. We needed to have a flu vaccine to win World War II. We needed that flu vaccine to beat the Nazis in Europe. That is irrational and absurd — to have a mandatory vaccine mandate in the military is [what Hegseth calls irrational].

Sen. Alsobrooks: …the outbreak of influenza at Lackland Air Force Base that has now killed an airman who was unvaccinated would argue otherwise…

Dr. Schwartz: …when I was in the Coast Guard, at the Coast Guard Training Center, Cape May, we were seeing increases in febrile respiratory illnesses, and it was due to adenovirus… When the adenovirus vaccine became available, we did make it mandatory… and within a couple of weeks of us instituting that mandatory adenovirus vaccine, we did not see any such outbreaks.

Well, good. Vaccine mandates can be effective and are important.

Sen. Alsobrooks: …after your nomination, Secretary Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ally Aaron Siri called you “the queen of mandating vaccines” during your time at the Coast Guard…

I would take that as such a compliment.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I want to be the CDC director for all Americans. I don’t want to be the CDC director just for Americans that believe in vaccines. I want to be the CDC director for Aaron Siri’s [supporters] and people that have concerns about vaccines.

Oh, actually, that’s kind of a problem, because Aaron Siri would like the CDC director to just rubber-stamp all of his suggestions.

Sen. Alsobrooks: …a single vitamin K shot is a highly effective intervention to prevent dangerous internal bleeding in newborns… Can you confirm for us today that the vitamin K shot is safe?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I can confirm that the vitamin K shot is safe. I do worry, like you, about conflation of vitamin K with other vaccines that parents may be concerned about.

It’s not a vaccine. It’s literally a fucking vitamin. It’s in the name.

Dr. Schwartz: …I absolutely believe it is safe and effective. And I urge all parents to consider that.

And it saves babies’ lives. You should make sure that your kid gets a vitamin K shot when it pops out.

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Hawley: data centers and abortion reporting

Sen. Hawley: …I get asked now pretty regularly about the health effects of living near a data center… the effects of electromagnetic fields, neurological issues associated with the industrial drone, this constant noise… is the CDC currently doing any kind of study of the health effects of living near one of these massive industrial data centers?

Dr. Schwartz: I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that NIOSH — they do these health hazard evaluations… if I am confirmed as CDC director, I would actually love to work with your staff to understand [whether] NIOSH [has] done an HHE regarding data centers.

At least he’s not talking about a fucking lab leak. I wish he showed that kind of humility when he’s talking about virology research.

Sen. Hawley: The CDC collects data on abortions that are committed in the United States through a system called the abortion reporting system. This system is voluntary, and so a number of states — not coincidentally large blue states — do not turn over any data…

My state, the state of Washington, doesn’t actually want creepy, women-hating, misogynist assholes like you tracking them down for getting just basic medical care for their reproductive health.

Sen. Hawley: …to collect that data from these states, and to work with those states that are currently holding out… so that we can get a picture of what really is going on here. Will you do that?

It’s none of your goddamn business, Josh Hawley. Yeah, move it to where the men are who can really make use of that data and facilitating Gilead.

Dr. Schwartz: …I also want to make sure that certain states are not conflating emergency services and hiding abortions in that emergency services case definition. We need to make sure we’re pulling out true abortions…

“True abortions.” Tremendous. Fantastic.

Well, if I were you, Josh Hawley, I’d take that up with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who wants to just deregulate the fuck out of everything so that all these companies can just pollute their little hearts out.

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Blunt Rochester: judgment and independence

Sen. Blunt Rochester: …in the last 18 months, the CDC has had a confirmed director for only 29 days. You are well qualified, but we’ve seen a lot of qualified people struggle to succeed in this administration… it’s my understanding [that] while the administration put your name forward, this was not Secretary Kennedy’s choice… you did mandate that the new military recruits receive the adenovirus vaccine in Cape May, and that this actually brought down the number of cases to zero.

Yeah, because guess what? Vaccines work.

Sen. Blunt Rochester: …in April, Secretary Hegseth rolled back the flu vaccine mandate that had been in place in the United States since World War II… a major flu outbreak occurred at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas… would you have advised Secretary Hegseth against the decision to roll back the flu vaccine mandate for American troops?

And guess what? A guy in the military died because of it. Because he died of flu, and he didn’t have a vaccine that would have saved his life.

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I really don’t like speaking in hypotheticals, but what I will tell you is —

But you’re going to have to, because this is your confirmation hearing. This is what normally happens at a job interview. What would you do in this situation, which is literally going to be your job?

Dr. Schwartz: …I do understand that there are some concerns specifically about influenza, because it has the 35 to 57 percent effectiveness season to season. So I can understand why certain individuals may have some concerns about mandating a vaccine that’s not perfect.

Literally, this vaccine was developed so that we could beat the Nazis and win World War II. I’m not even kidding. National security and military readiness is dependent on having robust immunization programs and making sure that our warfighters can stay on their feet instead of landing in a fucking hospital bed or in the morgue.

Sen. Blunt Rochester: Would you reinstate the back-to-school vaccine campaign?

Dr. Schwartz: So, Senator, what I would like to do is make sure that I answer — I would actually like to talk to the CDC career scientists to understand what the current resources are…

That’s not the CDC scientists’ job. If Congress tells you to do a campaign, then you do the campaign, because that’s called the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

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Moody: Soviet propaganda and “authoritarian” COVID

Sen. Moody: …In January, Dr. Oz, Dr. Bhattacharya, and Dr. Makary presented a memo to then-acting CDC director Jim O’Neill recommending the U.S. adopt a narrow childhood vaccine [schedule]…

Jim O’Neill, the man who believes that we should commercialize organ sales.

Sen. Moody: Do you agree with the memo’s recommendation to no longer universally recommend all 17 vaccines?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, I agree with the president of the United States, who asked HHS to take a look at that said memo…

She’s pro-Denmarkification. We’re done.

Just blanket adopting Denmark’s vaccine schedule makes absolutely no sense. Although I would say that it’s okay if we adopt Denmark’s method of developing their vaccine recommendations, because it’s the same method the U.S. used to use — the GRADE framework for evaluating evidence and making vaccine [recommendations].

Again, what kind of person are you going to be, Erica? Are you going to be the kind of person like Susan Monarez who will get fired rather than do something that Kennedy wants you to do that you know is going to kill children? It’s evil.

Sen. Moody: …if you’ll remember, there was a time when folks wanted to shut people up in their homes —

No, that didn’t happen. That did not happen, ma’am. They shut down the cruise industry. They did not lock people down in their homes.

Sen. Moody: …an extreme authoritarian group that want to control lives…

This sounds so familiar recently. Oh, right. It’s like you and all of your colleagues.

Sen. Moody: …social distancing — which, by the way, when I was attorney general, I led a grand jury investigation which said that that was created out of thin air with no basis in science. The six-foot rule. You had to have your COVID shot to go [to the convention]…

This is a party that says — it’s not even your party’s convention, bitch! To expect people to get a vaccine to go to something voluntary that you totally don’t have to go to — a literal convention or conference — and somehow that means that they’re authoritarian commies?

Sen. Moody: …Florida led the litigation charge against mandatory vaccines.

I know. That’s because your governor is an anti-vaxxer, and so is your Surgeon General. He’s a crazy anti-vaxxer who’s going to give so many Floridian children measles.

I got to show you guys something. I got a new office set up in here. And my husband is from the Soviet Union, so I bought all this propaganda shit a while ago. And now I’ve got great new home office decorations (shows Soviet propaganda poster)

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Hickenlooper: canceling mRNA research

Sen. Hickenlooper: Mr. Kaufman, as you know, last year the administration abruptly canceled 22 projects, roughly $500 million, of research on the mRNA platform… I’ve been led to believe that you supported the cancellation of the research funding.

Mr. Kaufman: That is correct, Senator.

Sen. Hickenlooper: …if mRNA research like this is being canceled, how can we begin to make sure that such a promising pathway is being adequately investigated?

Mr. Kaufman: …NIH currently is doing hundreds of millions of dollars of research in mRNA platforms —

Right, and that’s NIH’s job. It’s not really ASPR’s job. And those cancellations were made [at] BARDA, your favorite agency.

Mr. Kaufman: …I believe we have hundreds of millions of people that were vaccinated with the first-ever mRNA platform, the COVID-19 vaccine —

It wasn’t the first ever, actually. Many, many clinical trials have been going on with the same platform.

Mr. Kaufman: …The research, in my opinion, should be redirected to learning what worked well with the [existing] platform and what didn’t…

So that implies we can’t do two things at once. No, literally, like, those new vaccines are for pan-coronavirus vaccines. So a vaccine that you wouldn’t have to get updated as much. It would work against COVID. It would work against any variant. It would work against other SARS-related coronaviruses as well in case one emerged in the future. That’s what it was doing. Some of this was for new lipid nanoparticles that would allow the vaccine to be taken up better, that would allow for better mucosal immunity — things like that, that would actually maybe prevent more infections. This guy’s full of shit.

Mr. Kaufman: …even though we may have slowed the research down in that arena right now, we still have the capability today if we are hit with a novel threat.

We could just pop one into the old mRNA platform, fire it back up. Operation Warp Speed all over again. Except, like, wouldn’t it be better to have the vaccines ready to go before something like that happened? Or better yet, prevent something like that from happening altogether by making sure that we had better vaccines? And that’s what that research was largely [for].

Thank you, Michelle on Substack, who just said that my expertise is helpful in breaking through the BS. This is literally why I do this stuff, because the fact is, most people don’t pay attention to this kind of stuff. It’s really boring. Talking about NIOSH and all these agencies and all these different things that they do. And a lot of the work that the CDC does, the work that ASPR does — a lot of this is kind of boring work, because ideally, you don’t have some sort of crisis to respond to. So it’s really boring, and they know this. And that’s why they can bullshit about this stuff, because they are counting on the fact that most people just don’t follow this stuff.

Right now, the Trump administration is doing its absolute very best to try to seem like HHS is full of reasonable, highly qualified scientists and competent people. It is not. But they do have these people who are competent in Erica Schwartz’s case. She’s very qualified — where I’d say that I don’t think she should be confirmed, although I think she will be, because she won’t answer these questions. To me, that’s disqualifying, but scientifically, she is qualified. Sean Kaufman, same thing. This guy’s an anti-vaxxer who said he’d rather die than give his kids a COVID vaccine. And when he got asked about that directly, he said some bullshit about going to get them a serology test at Kroger. I know more about the science than Sean Kaufman. And unlike Sean Kaufman, I went to graduate school and got a PhD for it, too. So I’m here to tell you that he’s wrong, and I’m here to hold the fucking accountability flame to these people’s asses.

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Murray: cyclospora and mRNA, round two

Sen. Murray: …there is a parasite spreading today, likely through some fresh types of produce, and sending people to the hospital with what doctors are calling explosive diarrhea. And here’s the thing: the CDC used to conduct surveillance on this very infection through a program called FoodNet. But in July of ‘25, thanks to Trump, CDC made reporting on that illness optional. Now we are here a year later and we’re already seeing over 7,000 confirmed or under-investigation cases and over 100 hospitalizations… Dr. Schwartz, is there any scientific or medical justification for CDC having eliminated mandatory reporting of that parasite?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, this is the first I’ve heard of that. Cyclospora, as you know, is a terrible, terrible disease.

This is the first I’ve heard of it? This is literally all over the news right now.

Dr. Schwartz: …I’m not a cyclospora person —

It has a cell. This was canceled a year ago. It’s a eukaryote. However, I don’t want to get it. And I’m glad that there’s people at the CDC — or used to be — who were tracking it, because it was a reportable disease. Then we could stop these outbreaks. And I love how the new CDC director nominee just hasn’t been paying attention to any of the news. She knows that the CDC is hiring, including her, but she somehow hasn’t heard about cyclospora.

Patty’s just nailed one of the hardest things about public health, though, and pandemic prevention and outbreak prevention. [If] you’re actually successful at doing your work, then it looks like you didn’t do anything. And so people have a hard time wanting to continue to give you money and fund that work when it looks like nothing’s happening. But the reality is, nothing happening is the desired outcome.

Sen. Murray: …I just wanted to be on the record — you are fine with that [mRNA research] being canceled?

Mr. Kaufman: Senator, I think it’s the type of research that we’re looking at… going back and learning about what can improve and why things worked well and why things didn’t is absolutely critical research.

This is such a stupid explanation.

Sen. Murray: …But Dr. Schwartz, I’m here too, so same question. Do you agree with the Secretary’s decision to cancel mRNA research funding?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, this is the first time I’m actually hearing about this as a private citizen. I certainly was not following that.

I didn’t even know that we canceled half a billion dollars in mRNA research that directly impacts my new job at the CDC. I just haven’t been paying attention to any of the news. I haven’t turned on social media. I didn’t do any research about what’s been going on at the CDC. Totally prepared for this job interview, though.

Sen. Murray: The CDC was doing just that, but then in April, the CDC delayed and ultimately blocked the release of a report that demonstrated that the COVID [vaccine] was highly effective — a study which was [eventually independently published in JAMA]…

It was actually acting director and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya who did that. And, you know, his buddies over at the FDA [blocked] a paper that was under consideration and under review for publication in the journal that I’m the editor-in-chief of. Boy, was I unamused to find out about that.

Sen. Murray: …[if the] Secretary Kennedy asks you to commit in advance to approving every recommendation [ACIP] makes in the future, regardless of scientific evidence, will you do that?

Dr. Schwartz: Senator, the secretary would never ask me to do that.

Yes, he would. He literally did that. And even if she only heard about it today, now at least four people have told her.

This is such bullshit. And this is exactly why Erica Schwartz is unqualified for this job, even though she is actually highly qualified from a scientific perspective. It literally happened. You’re denying reality. You are not qualified to be in charge of the CDC.

Dr. Schwartz: I will follow the science wherever it leads, Senator. You have my commitment on that.

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Cassidy’s closing: the EHR that proves nothing

Sen. Cassidy: Mr. Kaufman, we’ve got to restore trust. You were running for [school board]. You said you hated the CDC. …that undermines trust in CDC. What do you comment on that?

Mr. Kaufman: …In fact, there have been many statements, post and pre, where I have said that the CDC is America’s treasure… When I was running for school board, I believed in three fundamentals… I believe that they provide the best information, all of it, not incomplete, not just the good news, but also the bad news as well…

Yeah, that’s literally how things go. That’s normally what the CDC actually does. The recommended vaccine schedule — the key term there is recommended. They are recommendations.

Sen. Cassidy: I am almost flummoxed that you would support more research on the development of mRNA-type vaccines. Now you speak of the need to do research on the side effects, the adverse events, but that would be CDC or NIH doing that research. At ASPR, you’re supposed to be supporting advanced research and the development of pandemic vaccines… If the Chinese fashion a designer [pathogen] and they release it upon the world, our biosecurity depends upon the ability to rapidly respond to it.

Fuck you, Bill Cassidy. “If China makes a designer [pathogen] and releases it on the world” — that’s another way of saying lab leak. You really don’t want to do research on that, man? Because that’s one of the Republicans’ current prevailing lab-leak hypotheses. But he’s right that you could make an mRNA vaccine very quickly. Although I would add, China made an inactivated vaccine, the old-fashioned way, Jonas Salk style, before mRNA vaccines were available in the U.S.

Mr. Kaufman: …The current research that was being proposed was taking existing strains of things we know about —

No.

Mr. Kaufman: …and rather than using tested and proven vaccine platforms —

Not true.

Mr. Kaufman: …like viral vectors and traditional platforms —

Not true.

Mr. Kaufman: During the COVID outbreak, it was the traditional viral vector that caused the thromboembolic disease —

J&J clot shot.

Sen. Cassidy: …I am just, again, flabbergasted that you would [not support] vaccines because there were some adverse events. I mean, there’s an adverse event from the Aleve I took this morning for my bad [back]… one was taken off the market because it was unsafe. It’s called Vioxx. We still take Aleve and Advil. We still take NSAIDs. We still do research on them.

Mr. Kaufman: …moving forward, I would love to do more research on mRNA vaccines —

No, you wouldn’t.

Sen. Cassidy: …ASPR’s job is [to develop and stockpile countermeasures]. And the fact that you’re casting doubt upon it, obviously, is concerning.

You’re making a bunch of bullshit excuses for that mRNA vaccine research being canceled that don’t make any sense whatsoever. So it either suggests that you don’t understand how mRNA technology works, which I don’t think is actually true, or you’re just making shit up to justify something that was a political decision and had no basis in science.

Mr. Kaufman: The COVID mRNA vaccine was the only mRNA platform in human health ever used —

It was not the first mRNA vaccine ever used. There have literally been many, many clinical trials for everything from CMV, which is a herpesvirus, to influenza, to MERS coronavirus, to SARS-CoV-2. They studied mRNA vaccines extensively before Operation Warp Speed happened, which is precisely why we were able to get those vaccines onto the market in ten months.

Sen. Cassidy: …have you stood up to someone in charge of you and told them that they were wrong and that you would not carry out that order? [Dr. Schwartz.]

Dr. Schwartz: It’s a very specific example. [The] Coast Guard wanted to transition from a paper health record system to an electronic health record system… It made sense to go with DoD… I recommended [it], [but leadership] said, we’re going to go ahead and build our own instance of an EHR. Several years later, $60 million later, they still did not have their own instance of an EHR. They looked to me and said, Dr. Schwartz, what was it that you recommended again? And I said, we should be going with the DoD EHR.

So in other words, you didn’t successfully stand up to your superiors. You just disagreed with them, and they ignored you, and they still managed to not do what they were supposed to do.

Dr. Schwartz: I disagreed in private, but I certainly have had many instances like that where my recommendations were [ignored]—

Sen. Cassidy: So in other words, you respected the chain of command and disagreed in private.

I think that Bill Cassidy is asking: are you going to fucking follow the chain of command and disagree in private when they ask you to rubber-stamp disinformation about vaccines or to just simply take vaccines off the schedule altogether? Because you’ll be at the place where the rubber hits the road. And this is not a theoretical. This is going to be your job, your literal job, Dr. Schwartz.

Sen. Cassidy: …But anyone that knows an iota of our demographics knows we are not Denmark.

Indeed.

Sen. Cassidy: …would you just accept ACIP recommendations even if they were attempting to adopt a system not appropriate for our country?

Dr. Schwartz: Chairman, I would never, ever accept ACIP recommendations without doing a deep dive into what those recommendations are. I would work with these career scientists at the CDC. I would work with Dr. Jennifer Shuford, who’s the chief medical officer at the CDC —

Boy, has she been trained to just recite this like a trained monkey every single time. “I will do a deep dive. I will talk to this anti-vaxxer that Kennedy has put into the chief medical officer role at CDC.”

Sen. Cassidy: It’s been a long meeting, so thank you. For members wishing to ask questions for the record… we stand adjourned.

Thank God.

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Bracing and somewhat brutal

Okay, well, that was bracing and somewhat brutal. And it’s been two and a half hours and I actually have some work to do, so I’m probably going to go pretty quickly here.

I think I’m a little surprised that Erica Schwartz was so obvious about the fact that she is unwilling to answer a question, in a direct way, that has to do with: are you going to be a political loyalist or not? And her answer to that — based on the fact that she kept trying to answer different questions — [was] that she essentially pretended not to know anything about the CDC or anything that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done, or anything that has happened, or Susan Monarez getting fired, or $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine research getting canned, or the wild-to-mild flu vaccine campaign that Congress appropriated money for getting canceled arbitrarily, or the smoking office getting canceled, or Pete Hegseth saying that we don’t need flu vaccine mandates. And her answer every single time is this reminds me of some other totally different situation when I was in the Coast Guard. And Trump would never ask her to break the law. And Kennedy would never ask her to approve something that wasn’t scientifically valid. And I have no idea that the CDC is publishing shit on its website that says that vaccines might cause autism. And on and on and on.

And to be clear, it’s not just that I disagree with anti-vax people or I’m enthusiastic about vaccines or I want more grant money to work on vaccines. The fact is, if you deny people vaccines that are known to be safe and effective, you are putting them at risk of death. You are putting them at risk of severe illness, injury, and death. And to me, that is an evil thing to do. As Bill Cassidy said in his opening remarks, it is evil to prevent people from getting access to medical interventions like vaccines that would prevent lethal illness. And as he correctly also pointed out, children in the US are dying as a result.

We are currently having a situation with measles where we have already exceeded the number of measles cases that we had last year. We will have at least twice that number this year. We aren’t doing anything to stop this measles epidemic, by the way, and vaccination rates continue to go down, down, down in many communities. We are going to be dealing with measles for the foreseeable future. It will take years to eliminate. And the damage that has already been done by many of these policies is hugely consequential. It’s going to be a huge economic issue going forward. It’s also a huge national security issue. It’s a huge issue in terms of our healthcare capacity.

And so it’s also something that’s very relevant to the ASPR, because what’s going to happen if we have a really bad flu season in a community that’s currently being overwhelmed with measles? What happens when there’s people who need ventilators in the community and there’s no ventilators available because they’re full of kids? I mean, this is what we’re talking about here, and this is what’s going to start happening in communities all over America.

And so for Erica Schwartz — my hairs on my neck stood up when she said “radical transparency” for the first time, because I think under her leadership, what we’re going to see is putting Band-Aids on things just enough so that it can look like CDC is doing something, and trying to cover up the fact that these things are so widespread. And cyclospora is a great example of this. So I’m not into all of these parasites and I’m really not into foodborne stuff. And, you know, I’m on medical leave right now and I haven’t really talked about a lot of the reasons why, but one of them is because I actually have some kind of gastrointestinal problem that we still don’t really know what it is. And I do a lot of vomiting, so I don’t like to actually worry about those foodborne things — I have enough of that problematic stuff in my life. But cyclospora is one of these things that you can’t really cover up when enough people get it, because, as was pointed out, it causes explosive diarrhea.

To me, it’s insane that she had no idea that there’s cyclospora outbreaks happening, because as much as I don’t even live in the U.S. anymore, just following the news, being on social media at all, turning on the TV — like, this was on The National last night, on CBC, the news in Canada. So it’s impossible to avoid this unless you’re living out in the middle of nowhere, like off the grid.

Whoever prepped her for this — as Bill Cassidy said, you obviously got murder-boarded, which means that basically she got together with a bunch of consultants, her political people who are handling her, and they just asked a bunch of questions that they anticipated she would be asked. And she practiced giving these non-answers. And so what we saw there was, I think, somebody who for her entire life and career has served with distinction. She is very competent. She is a scientist and a physician, and she would normally be an extremely great choice for CDC director. But we saw somebody with that background doing something that she hasn’t been very experienced with in her career, and that is lying to the Senate about what kind of job she’s going to do, because she’s clearly going to do whatever Secretary Kennedy wants her to do.

Because on paper she’s sort of like the anti–Casey Means. She’s extremely qualified to be the CDC director. She’s a dream CDC director in many ways, and it’s quite clear to me that she does care deeply about the medical and scientific components of her job, as well as the service to her country, which I find commendable. But the fact is she’s not serving her country if she comes into the Senate and lies about what she’s going to do, because she is going to just pretend that, oh, President Trump would never ask me to break the law. Like, the man is literally a convicted felon, and judge after judge just keeps reaffirming that he raped E. Jean Carroll, which, as a survivor of sexual assault, I have to say I have been having a very difficult time looking at any kind of news lately, because it’s nonstop discussion about how everybody running our government basically is a fucking rapist.

And I already know that they hate women, which we saw certainly when Josh Hawley asked his little question about why aren’t we getting access to all of those databases that have records of women getting abortions in blue states. Boy, I can’t think of anything nefarious that the Republicans would do with information like that.

Now, she kept saying, I’m going to follow the science, I do everything with my greatest commitment to scientific integrity. But she’s obviously — if she’s denying reality, if she’s denying the fact that Kennedy is an anti-vaxxer who has literally put policies in place that have killed people. And that’s a whole separate project I’m working on: I’m actually trying to quantify the number of people who have been killed by HHS policy under Secretary Kennedy, including his decision to de-schedule a bunch of vaccines — a decision that has now been reversed by the courts.

And they discussed Aaron Siri. For those of you who don’t know who Aaron Siri is, he is a great-value Ali Velshi impersonator who is a trial litigator in vaccine injury lawsuits, and very close, obviously, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is also a litigator, and whose son is a vaccine injury litigator. And they all sued people for vaccine injuries and make a lot of money together. He gave a presentation that was absolutely insane at the last ACIP meeting. Do remember that all of these people are also incompetent. Now, Erica Schwartz would be an exception to that rule, but she would still be incompetent, because even though she herself actually is competent, she would not act in a competent way. She would not actually be the nation’s CDC director.

She talks a good game about not being paternalistic and top-down, and she’s going to be everybody’s friend, even the anti-vaxxers. But the reality is the CDC director already does that. It is not the CDC director’s job to be beloved by the American people. The CDC director’s job is to make sure that the CDC is serving the American people, is doing the work that it’s supposed to do. And currently, the CDC can’t do the work that it’s supposed to do because so many people have been eliminated from the CDC. It’s not functional anymore. And the people that they’re hiring are political operatives. So they are not going to make decisions based on science. She wants to have a listening session with the career scientists at CDC, who can all tell her what a fucked-up place it’s been to work for the last year and a half. And then she’ll smile and say, okay, I’m totally going to take your concerns seriously — and still do whatever the fuck Kennedy tells her to do. She’s just going to look better about doing it.

And that’s the same thing with Sean Kaufman. I have never seen a bigger bullshitter in my life. But you know what, I have — because the biosecurity industry in particular is full of people like that. He’s an anti-vaxxer, and his bullshit excuses about, oh, I just went to the Kroger and got my kids an antibody test, turned into a LinkedIn post where he said he’d rather perish than give his seropositive kids the COVID vaccine — which he claims is safe and effective, but he also claims that it’s totally fine to cut $500 million worth of mRNA research that’s needed for pan-coronavirus vaccines and universal influenza vaccines. That was directly to BARDA, the agency that he loves, that does research developing vaccines for the Strategic National Stockpile, which ASPR — the job that he is trying to get — manages. So I think he’s pretty unqualified to be the ASPR.

There was no rule during the Biden administration that you couldn’t get monoclonals unless you got a vaccine. They work differently. If [someone’s] got COVID and they’re going to die from it, you would give them monoclonals. The CDC is not like, oh, only if you get the Fauci ouchie do you get to have access to these wonderful monoclonals. Such bullshit. This stuff is all completely made up, and Sean Kaufman went along with it. And we can’t have the administrator for strategic preparedness and response saying stuff that’s completely not true to justify decisions that were made politically.

They told us very clearly today that they’re going to do whatever their masters want them to do, and that’s why neither of them are qualified for these jobs. Unfortunately, I think that probably both of them are going to get confirmed, but I think that it is worth writing to your senators, particularly if they are on the health committee. I know that I will certainly be dropping yet another line to Senator Patty Murray of the great state of Washington, of which I am a resident. And I will be letting Senator Murray know that I appreciated her holding these people accountable.

A little housekeeping

Okay, a little piece of housekeeping. I’ve been trying to experiment with different ways to keep you informed about all of this stuff. I do have a couple pieces that are going to be coming out in Zeteo, so look out for those. That’s going to be about the lab leak and the origins of the pandemic and Tulsi Gabbard’s bullshit that she came out with the other day. And I’m doing more writing on my Substack, partly because it’s just really exhausting showing up sometimes and doing these Substack Lives. I really like having conversations with other people, but right now the world is just such a shit show. Jessica and I had a long conversation just about our bandwidth and our ability to do a weekly show. I don’t think that I have the bandwidth to do a daily show, but I’m going to try. So instead of calling it my daily ranting show, I’m just going to kind of do it when I’m up for it.

Sometimes I actually do have to get work done, too. And because I’ve been sick, I’m not as productive as I used to be. And sometimes it’s very difficult for me to actually do work, because some of the medical issue I’m dealing with has affected my mental health as well. So it’s a very difficult time for all of us, and I’m just trying to do the best I can to make sure that you guys are informed.

What I found really helpful today was that so many people told me that this was helpful, because I don’t want to waste your time. But I do think that these hearings are actually really important to debunk in real time, because there is so much bullshit that just gets left on the table. And the reality is a lot of this stuff is real inside baseball with either the way the federal government works or scientific topics that most people don’t find that interesting. But sometimes people start making shit up, and they’re counting on the fact that you guys actually don’t know about this stuff. And so that is something I think I can help with.

Please subscribe to my Substack, not just follow me. Substack is weird, and I don’t know how I feel about Substack as a social media platform. But I do like the fact that with Substack, I can write longer things, we can have these lives, there’s multiple opportunities to communicate with people. If you subscribe, then you will actually see the stuff that I produce, because the algorithm is so weird. My Substack Notes is nonstop Epstein file stuff, so it’s like constantly being re-traumatized every time I log into the site.

Right now I do feel that one of the administration’s most effective tactics is just taking advantage of people’s ignorance about things that they never needed to know about, and making you think that things aren’t true. And so many of my colleagues are either not in a position to speak up about it or they’re afraid to speak up about it. And I have to say, it has taken a massive, tremendous toll on my life and career. I think it’s really important to make sure that people understand all the things that are happening. So please subscribe to me, because then I will be able to deliver this type of communication most effectively to you. And that’s what I’m here to do.

And thanks, everybody, for tuning in and dealing with the audio problems early. I’m glad that I figured it out. Thanks also to everybody who sat through, like, 30 minutes of the [MK Ultra hearing] with me talking to a silent screen. Depending on how I feel, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow. I actually do have some updates about the Bundibugyo Ebola virus outbreak — they’re not good, unfortunately. But I do have some stuff coming out about Samaritan’s Purse and the response so far that I think people should know about. So maybe I will see you tomorrow. Anyways, thanks so much again for joining me. Subscribe, follow, all of that stuff. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Oh, now I don’t know how to end it. Okay, bye for real. Thanks so much, guys.

Related from Rasmussen Retorts

• The Vaccine Disinformation to Descheduling Pipeline

• All Roads Lead to Antivaxapalooza

• One Year In: How the Trump Administration Eroded Public Health

• Children’s Death Defense (measles and kids dying from vaccine-preventable disease)

• You Can’t Stop Ebola with More Ebola

• Let’s Take a Look at Marco Rubio’s Ebola Policy Ideas Over the Years!

• Why Ebola Isn’t Going to “Go Airborne”

Relevant links

• Susan Monarez fired for refusing to “rubber-stamp” Kennedy’s vaccine directives — CIDRAP; her Senate testimony — NPR

• CDC website changed to suggest vaccines may cause autism — NBC News

• The 250 pages of CDC/HHS emails (Debra Houry) — CBS News; Celine Gounder

• “Wild to mild” flu vaccine campaign canceled — Fortune

• Ebola outbreak (Bundibugyo virus), DRC and Uganda — WHO; CDC HAN

• HHS cancels ~$500M / 22 BARDA mRNA vaccine projects — HHS press release; BioSpace

• COVID vaccine effectiveness study blocked by Bhattacharya, published elsewhere — NBC News; Science

• OMB proposed rule requiring political review of federal grants — Federal Register

• CDC Office on Smoking and Health eliminated — STAT

• Hepatitis B birth dose dropped from universal recommendation — CIDRAP; childhood schedule remade to resemble Denmark’s — NBC News

• Lackland Air Force Base flu death after Hegseth dropped the mandate — The Hill; CNN

• Cyclospora outbreak and the end of mandatory FoodNet reporting — CDC HAN; Newsweek

• U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization — HHS fact sheet

• Samaritan’s Purse (Franklin Graham) — Wikipedia

• E. Jean Carroll civil verdicts against Trump — Reuters

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning in! See you tomorrow.

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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died unexpectedly over the weekend. This did not particularly fill me with grief, as the only nice thing I can think to say about him is that he did not join his colleagues Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) in climbing aboard the hardcore anti-vax express. Otherwise, Graham was a servile bitch to whatever interests would incrementally advance his own. He ate shit for Donald Trump for the better part of a decade and always gave it 10/10 and asked for more.

Perhaps that took its cumulative toll, because according to the coroner, Graham died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerosis. Basically, his arteries were hard and his aorta—the main artery carrying oxygenated blood out of the heart—ripped open as a result. This is unsurprising, given the aforementioned years of shit-eating. He also apparently refused advice to get medical attention, noting that he was too busy with Iran and Russia and going on Meet the Press for the 64th time to die. Alas, Graham ignored wise advice for the last time, and so death could not wait for Kristen Welker.

Neither could the antivaxxers waiting for polio survivor Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to die so they could somehow blame Jonas Salk for it, so they immediately traded one weak-chinned conservative Southern twink for another when Graham kicked the bucket. Also, pictures exist of him being vaccinated. He thanked God for vaccines. At the time, Trump was taking credit for Operation Warp Speed, so praising vaccination was actually mandatory to remain a MAGA in good standing. Those were the days!

Drop dead

It is also unsurprising that the entire Died Suddenly faction of the antivax movement has seized this opportunity to capitalize on Graham’s untimely passing. The ghouls of the anti-vax universe can never let a good death go to waste! The sudden death of a (marginally) healthy-seeming adult is shocking for most people. Sometimes they’ll even be so rattled as to accept an equally shocking claim that it was caused by something else: vaccines.

The just-asking-questions part is always the prelude to the “toxic spike protein from mRNA vaccines is giving you myocarditis and YOU’RE GONNA DIE” part. That, in turn, is the prelude to the “the only treatment is my artisanal protocol recipe that involves extremely overpriced ivermectin and a bunch of unproven supplements from my company” part. Graham hasn’t even been dead for 48 hours and already we’re into the advanced stages of the anti-vax bullshit death attribution cycle.

mRNA vaccines can cause myocarditis. The risk is highest in boys and young men. The risk isn’t very high even at its highest, and vaccine-related myocarditis generally does not cause lethal disease or even any lasting effects at all. The risk of myocarditis from having COVID when unvaccinated is much higher than from the vaccine, and the risk of severe disease and death is higher too.

The reality is that these facts are boring, despite the fact that we can see with our own eyes and ears that they are true. Me and every other scientist or clinician or public health professional or patient advocate or critically thinking human being can tell you that immunization campaigns are not followed by mass death. Yet the anti-vaxxers are undeterred, because there are a whole lot of non-critically thinking human beings these days. There are a lot of people like Lindsey Graham too, who are willing to suspend critical thinking out of cowardice, complicity, and cashing in.

To hear these anti-vaxxers talk, totally healthy people of all ages from infants to the elderly are dropping like flies all around us. There is an epidemic of people dying suddenly, because their spike proteins have relentlessly attacked their poor defenseless cardiomyocytes with their signature toxicity. Thousands of people have died when this sinister protein broke their hearts! Maybe even millions!

Except I do not know anyone who has dropped dead after receiving a vaccination, even from a known side effect like anaphylaxis. I don’t have a friend-of-a-friend who this happened to. I have never even heard someone who is not an anti-vaxxer talk about knowing someone who died from a vaccine. The only times I’ve ever heard someone I know personally say they heard about someone dying from a vaccine are random relatives or my former grade school or high school classmates sharing a Joe Rogan clip on Facebook. I also went to college with a woman who is trying really, really hard to become a successful MAHA metabolic dysfunction grifter. But I’ve never heard a colleague—like one of the literally hundreds of scientists who study pathogens and vaccines I know—say they have ever personally encountered someone who died suddenly after a vaccine with a more detailed and reasonable explanation than VACCINES DID IT.

Many people will say that the reason we aren’t paying attention is because Big Pharma is covering it up. If that were true, don’t you think I’d know about it? I’m the co-Editor-in-Chief of a journal called Vaccine. If there were a big cover-up of millions of the vaccinated dead, my colleagues and I would probably need to be in on it, given the number of vaccine clinical trials we publish in our journal! So far, I have yet to receive a demand from Pfizer or Moderna or Big mRNA Vaccine to cover up millions of vaccinated dead people who got cooked by spike.

Deaths from vaccine injury are so rare that a reanimated Lindsey Graham returning briefly from Hell to come out of the closet is more likely than him having an aortic dissection because he got a COVID shot some unknown number of months or years ago.

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There is no such thing as SADS

If there’s one thing about anti-vaxxers, they are prolific at discovering new diseases caused by vaccines. Since they are not constrained by reality or the truth, they are free to let their imaginations run wild. Since they also usually have no expertise in relevant fields and/or are scientifically incompetent, that means they just make up stupid shit and act like it’s real. Like this claim about SUDDEN ADULT DEATH SYNDROME (SADS), also known as “COVID-19 VACCINE-INDUCED CARDIAC ARREST,” according to anti-vax hellsite mosquito Nicolas Hulscher. Also known as NOT A VACCINE INJURY, BECAUSE IT’S MADE UP BY ANTI-VAXXERS.

Okay, that’s not entirely true that SADS is meaningless in the world of disease, because there is a coronavirus called swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV). It causes pig diarrhea epidemics. It has nothing to do with COVID vaccines except it’s also it’s a coronavirus (it’s an alphacoronavirus, so it’s a different genus than SARS-CoV-2, but it does have a toxic spike protein!). Also, sometimes an unexplained cardiac death can be called sudden arrhythmia death syndrome, but this specifically refers to a sudden cardiac arrest with no underlying explanation, including vaccination. SADS-CoV and SADS are as real as a heart attack, but the fictional vaccine injury SADS is not. Lindsey Graham did not die from any of these types of SADS, real or not.

Hulscher is by no means the only luminary in the anti-vax world worked up about SADS. Although Laura Loomer has opted to take this round of Loomering in the poisoning-by-Iran-or-Russia direction, plenty of other anti-vaxxers are weighing in on Graham’s vaccination status buying his ticket to the grave.

Here is the prevailing theory: a single mRNA vaccine buys you a lifetime of spike protein production (no it doesn’t), which is very bad because spike is TOXIC (no it isn’t). You will shed this cloud of noxious envelope glycoproteins (no you won’t) and infect others with spike protein (this doesn’t even make sense). Then I guess SADS will become even more widespread than it already is. You can’t cure it, but you can treat it with the wellness industry’s finest unproven snake oil regimens. Hulscher’s boss Peter McCullough is a disgraced cardiologist who operates a scam ivermectin and supplement pill mill, as well as a disinformation empire. Anti-vaxxers like Hulscher and McCullough are all ultimately con artists and they have millions of reasons to convince you that SADS is real, it can get you any time, and only they can stop you from going the way of Lindsey Graham.

Graham was a 71-year-old man whose legacy will be remembered as a perpetual simp who traded America for incremental proximity to power. That was a decision he made, and I can’t imagine it was a peaceful or relaxing experience. Being a tyrant’s pet doesn’t spare you from their abuse. Graham also had just returned on a long-haul flight from Ukraine and was planning to immediately go on a national Sunday morning news show with very little sleep. All of these things take a real physical toll, especially on older people who are not as resilient as they once were. If I had to guess why he died with no warning, I’d say that it’s probably because I don’t find it weird for an older, stressed-out fascist enabler to drop dead from some type of acute cardiovascular event. I think that sounds a lot more realistic than the idea that his COVID vaccines were a ticking time bomb for SADS to get him.

The majority of people are not anti-vaxxers. Graham himself wasn’t an anti-vaxxer. Although he did his fair share of anti-mandate medical freedom bullshitting—he was an unprincipled liar at his core—he wasn’t overtly opposed to vaccination. The reason that it seems like anti-vax views are so prevalent is because the anti-vaxxers don’t care about whether their material even seems true or not. They just keep producing the content. It sinks in. Over time, it cultivates enough doubt at population scale to make an impact on our health.

After enough people get used to hearing that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism, some will start to think it’s true. After enough people think the MMR causes autism, some will decline to get it for themselves or their families. After enough people decline the MMR, some will get measles. After enough people get measles, we will not be free of it without significant effort and concurrent immunization campaigns. That’s where we are at in the US right now.

Anti-vax views have become so normalized that any prominent death now of any public figure is immediately the subject of disinformation. It is in service of this same cause: to discourage vaccination, sow distrust in experts, and replace our previously functional, lawful, democratic government with a posse of kakistocratic white nationalist rapists trying to hurt and kill as many children as possible.

Lindsey Graham did not die from SADS, which is imaginary. His aorta did not tear open because of toxic spike protein or pseudouridine or the lipid nanoparticle or “experimental gene therapy” or whatever else. He did not have hardened arteries because he was vaccinated against COVID-19. Generally, people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to people who aren’t. He did not die from being vaccinated.

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Rasmussen Retorts with Vincent Racaniello — recorded June 23, 2026

Vincent: From Microbe TV, this is Rasmussen Retorts, recorded on June 23rd, 2026. I’m Vincent Racaniello, and joining me today is Dr. Angie Rasmussen. Hello, Angie.

Angie: Hi, Vincent. How you doing?

Vincent: Today we’re going to talk about the column you just wrote, called We Have Always Been at War with AIRBORNE — and airborne is in all capital letters. You begin by saying you’re at a conference in Kuala Lumpur when someone asked why the WHO took so long to admit that SARS-CoV-2 was airborne, and you wrote, “not this again.” So what does that mean, “not this again”?

Not this again

Angie: This has been a debate that has gone on since 2020. It really started very early on in the pandemic — probably right around the same time as the lab leak debate started. And that was whether or not to use the term “airborne” to describe this.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that SARS-1 didn’t transmit pre-symptomatically the way that SARS-2 does. If you think back to those early days, we didn’t know anything about this virus. The only thing we really had to work with was what happened with SARS-1, and with MERS, and what happens with the common cold coronaviruses — but since those don’t cause severe disease, we thought we’d base it on SARS. That was my reasoning, and it seems like everybody else was reasoning that way too.

There just hadn’t been that many transmission experiments done. There weren’t that many transmission models for coronaviruses, because SARS-1 and MERS — and especially MERS — are thought to not be as transmissible from person to person. SARS-1 was airborne, in the sense that it’s transmitted by the respiratory route, but there weren’t huge outbreaks except in places where a lot of people were congregating together. So people thought a lot of the transmission would be driven by contact transmission, or droplet transmission — getting something on your hands from wiping your nose, shaking somebody’s hand — or fomite transmission, which would be if you wiped your nose on a desk and somebody came along later and picked it up. I love all the different gross fomite options that there are. There’s so many gross things that you could touch.

But people thought it was largely transmitted that way. And some of this was actually based on studies that had been done with flu — but not necessarily strains of flu that were that clinically relevant. People didn’t used to have the kind of equipment that you need to do studies on true aerosol transmission, like some of our colleagues have now. Some really state-of-the-art stuff to look at this. So we didn’t understand at the time how prevalent aerosol transmission was.

The conversation went from “it’s either hardly transmissible at all” to “it’s like measles and tons and tons of people are going to get it.” We had all these people opining, talking about R-naught and the dispersion rate and all this epi stuff that I don’t really know that much about. I’m not an epidemiologist. And we’ve just got these randos stuck at home, deciding to run epi curves and opining about transmission modes.

At the time, WHO was getting a lot of flack for this. People were saying they had a tweet that said specifically that it’s not airborne — and they were referring to the fact that at the time they did think it was mostly droplet transmission. For WHO that’s super important, because as I learned in this debate, the word “airborne” means a lot of different things to a lot of different disciplines, and to clinical disciplines it means all kinds of different PPE, all kinds of different precautions — sometimes you have to have negative pressure rooms and things like that. So it actually has an impact in terms of how you would respond to an outbreak, in terms of clinical care and infection prevention. WHO erred on the side of caution, and people were very unhappy with the tweet that was like, “wash your hands, it’s droplet transmission — mostly we’re looking into aerosols being involved.”

And I don’t know if you remember this — it’s interesting to think about how much I’ve forgotten from the pandemic too — but if you remember the Skagit Valley Choir, it was this early outbreak that happened in Skagit Valley, Washington, about an hour north of where I lived at the time in Seattle. They were a community of people that got together for choir practice, and they were all very concerned about touching doorknobs and stuff — they had somebody doing an elbow thing with the door to hold it open, like we were all doing in March, maybe April of 2020. And all these people ended up getting COVID. It was recognized then that, oh, it’s probably spreading through the air. Then there was this whole big debate about whether it has to do with the size of the particle. And I remember being concerned at the time about how long the virus would remain infectious in different conditions.

Everybody was coming at this from a different angle. And I just did not like the word “airborne” either. WHO didn’t like it, many of our colleagues did not like it, because it was such a vague word. It really did not capture a standardized, unified idea. But the people who really wanted everybody to use this word wanted us to use it more in the context of, “oh my God, you guys, it’s airborne — it’s time to freak out about it.” And I’m not sure that’s really constructive either.

That’s kind of what the airborne wars were about. And that’s why, six years later — and I don’t think this person was asking to be a jerk, they professed to be fans of mine and Maria’s, Maria Van Kerkhove, who was asked about this at this panel — I think a lot of people didn’t understand why WHO would withhold information like that. And it really wasn’t about withholding information. It was about communicating accurately. Especially the WHO has a big responsibility, given that they’re issuing guidance that people are going to use clinically.

Vincent: So how did she answer that question?

Angie: She answered it by talking more about the things WHO has done recently that have been evidence-based and proven to work. She pointed toward the Andes virus outbreak, for example, on the MV Hondius, which WHO responded to very effectively — and they did so in a really transparent, evidence-based way. She said they had tried to do that with the airborne discussion. But it’s one of those things where, because people couldn’t even agree on the words we were using, it became so personal. A lot of what we ended up talking about was really the security threat that can be posed by all of these personal attacks.

And we’re seeing it now on so many of our colleagues — people are being, in some cases, arrested, essentially for doing their jobs, or for very, very minor offenses. That’s kind of where this has gone: the scientists are fighting each other over stupid things like, are we going to use this word or not, and we’re not really paying attention to the fact that science has been in trouble. These divisive arguments are not really scientific. They’re not very collegial. And it’s one of the mechanisms, I think, that has contributed to the situation we’re in right now.

Airborne like measles

Vincent: You’ve used three words today to describe the respiratory droplets that we make when we talk or speak or cough that can contain virus if we’re infected. You’ve said airborne, you’ve said aerosol, and respiratory droplets. Now, as you say in your post, “airborne” just means traveling through the air. But some people think it means just the tiniest particles that go a very long way. Is that correct?

Angie: Yeah. And there’s airborne like measles, which means you can walk into a room somebody was in two hours before, be in there for a minute, and if you’re not vaccinated you’ll probably get measles.

Vincent: That’s because the particles remain suspended a very long time, because they’re so tiny and they’re carried by air currents.

Angie: That’s right. And it’s such an infectious virus.

Vincent: So are we going to call that airborne, then?

Angie: That’s my problem with it. You could have the air full of measles and full of Andes virus, and I probably wouldn’t want to be in it depending on the titer of Andes virus — but I probably wouldn’t worry as much about Andes virus as I would about measles if I weren’t vaccinated, because with Andes virus I’d have to huff a lot of it. I wouldn’t even be as worried about H5N1 as I would about something like measles, that’s really, really infectious like that, if I didn’t have pre-existing immunity to it. The issue is that these droplets that remain suspended are very small, and they therefore don’t have much virus in them, so your virus has to be very infectious for it to infect you.

Vincent: Right. That’s why measles works. So what fraction of SARS-CoV-2 infections are transmitted by these tiniest of droplets that we’re calling airborne? Do we have any sense?

Angie: I don’t know that we do. The problem with this field — and this is why I just have opinions on it and don’t actually do that much research on it — is that I’m interested in infection routes. I’ll simulate aerosol transmission if that’s an infection route of interest to me, if it’s relevant to pathogenesis somehow. But a lot of the studies looking at transmission either look at whether it’s possible and whether, in your model, whatever you’re using as a model downstream is going to get infected and get sick.

One example of this with SARS-2 was, they’d get hamsters and put them in one cage, connected with a tube — a sealed system, so they’d have to share air. They’d infect hamsters on one side and not infect the hamsters on the other, and if the hamsters on the other got infected, then it was because of aerosols. You can simulate droplet transmission by basically putting virus in the animal’s nose. And they do this with people too — they have nebulizers where they can give people a controlled dose via the aerosol route. We look at people giving it to each other. Do you remember those old studies of people playing cards and stuff?

Vincent: Of course. There, it’s transmitted on the cards, right?

Angie: Yeah, it’s like fomite transmission. There were all these weird human studies — it was a good group in England, I think, who studied rhinoviruses and Coxsackievirus. They studied these mild respiratory viruses and did all these weird transmission studies where they put it on playing cards, put it on a pitcher of water, had everybody eat dinner together — all these different ways of looking at transmission. But rhinoviruses are not as transmissible in respiratory aerosols.

Vincent: That’s true. They’re mostly — your hands get contaminated, you touch your nose, and then you inoculate yourself. That’s why the card-playing thing is the way you transmit it, right?

Angie: Right. And I always thought I was going to be getting all of my rhinoviruses — I was worried about it when I was in grad school — and I don’t think so. I never grabbed virus and put my hand on my nose.

Vincent: Don’t use those kinds of practices in the lab when handling virus. You’re using a different term now — you’re using “aerosols.” Is that different from airborne?

Angie: I usually use “aerosols” to refer to the particles that would infect you, because I’m always thinking about it like the virus: how does the virus meet up with its host cell? That’s what the virus is trying to do. So what particles is it going to be in, and how are you going to get exposed to them?

Vincent: So any respiratory droplet is an aerosol, by your definition, right?

Angie: Yeah.

Vincent: And “airborne” is just the tiniest ones that go a long way. I don’t really like this — I’m just trying to clarify it.

It’s never been about six feet

Angie: This is also what I hate about this, because then you get into talking about it with some people, and here’s where the other studies come in. Now the aerosol folks have gotten together with some of the viral pathogenesis and transmission folks, and they’ve done more interdisciplinary studies since some of this stuff started. But some of these early studies were just with particles — they’d use particles of different sizes, and the whole thing was about different sizes, and I was like, I have no idea what happens with a five-micron particle versus a 50-micron particle. I can imagine what happens, but I don’t know exactly what that means in terms of virus transmission, because for me it’s never been about six feet. That sounds like physics. I don’t want to do that. For me it’s about the virus in particular.

Vincent: So why did they make this six-foot rule for SARS-CoV-2? What was that based on?

Angie: It was based on the idea that whatever arbitrary size droplets were cut off at, they don’t go farther than six feet, I think.

Vincent: Was that your memory of it? There are some droplets that go six feet, right? They fall to the ground. I think that’s what it was based on.

Angie: But I don’t think we ever did those studies for SARS-CoV-2 specifically.

Vincent: So it was just an extrapolation from other viruses.

Angie: Exactly, it was an extrapolation. I remember very early on, one of the first sets of studies — there were two dueling groups. One was NIH at Rocky Mountain Labs; I believe it was Vincent Munster. The other was the group at Hong Kong University — I think it was Malik [Peiris] or Leo Poon who did it. It was one of these studies that’s easy to do, virologically, but there was nothing on SARS-2 and these people had the virus, and this is the first and easiest thing you can do: put it on stuff you have around and see how long it remains infectious.

In Vincent’s study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, they’d used a Collison nebulizer to aerosolize the virus and found that it remained infectious for like 24 hours or something. But a Collison — or, it was a drum nebulizer. A drum nebulizer basically generates aerosols by what it sounds like: it’s a drum that rotates. And it’s not exactly the same as aerosols that you’d be exhaling or exposed to.

I admitted I was wrong

Vincent: So the whole brouhaha — I haven’t used that word in a while, brouhaha — is because WHO didn’t admit that it could happen by airborne, the little droplets, which who knows what fraction of it is. And anyway, wearing a mask just takes care of everything, right?

Angie: Yeah. And people weren’t wearing masks, and WHO wasn’t recommending them either. This is a favorite talking point now that people are trying to prosecute Tony Fauci again — that he lied about masks in March of 2020. But I implore people to remember what it was like then. People didn’t know. I didn’t know. I wasn’t anti-mask ever. I was just skeptical that masks were going to work, because I had to be fitted for an N95 every year, and I know N95s are also not super comfortable to wear all the time. So I could just imagine what was going to happen when everybody and their mom went out and tried to put on a respirator. I wasn’t convinced we would need that, and if we did, maybe surgical masks and bandanas and stuff would be enough. I didn’t really know. I’d never really thought about being in a pandemic where I’d need to think about wearing masks. And I was skeptical that masks were going to be that effective, because viruses are much smaller than masks, and again the only thing that would work would be a well-fitted N95 or equivalent respirator. At the time I was like, save that for the clinical people. My God, don’t encourage people to go out and wear N95s. I just expressed my skepticism.

And I think that’s kind of what happened. This whole conversation became very divided and very black-and-white and not very collegial in many cases. It was strange, because it was one of these topics where people just felt really strongly about it, and you almost couldn’t have a reasonable discussion. Like — I don’t necessarily like this word “airborne.” What does it mean? That’s one of my issues. Should we wear a mask because it’s airborne? I don’t know. I’d probably wear a mask if I was around somebody with Andes virus, just to be on the safe side, because it’s got such a high mortality rate — but I actually think that might even be overkill in most settings, unless it’s a cruise ship. The jury is still out on what the impact of masks actually is. They do work, and especially they work if you’re the one wearing the well-fitted N95 respirator. It works very well for you, and for people around you. But wearing this constantly, all the time — I still get yelled at for going out anywhere in public sometimes unmasked. There’s a point where sometimes people gravitated toward the more unreasonable ends of the spectrum and found it very difficult to just have a normal conversation, like scientists, about this.

Vincent: Well, you have a little quote from Tony Fauci here in your article. He tries to explain why he said, “right now in the U.S., people should not be walking around with masks.” And he said, well, we didn’t know if the transmission occurred through the air, we didn’t know if masks would work. But I don’t know — probably. The virus is coming out in droplets, it’s going to be caught up in masks. Even if you don’t have an N95, you could have a KN95, and maybe even a surgical mask would have some benefit. So it seems to me that you could err on the side of caution and say, yeah, you should wear masks.

Angie: That’s what the debate was about. And you know what? I admitted I was wrong. Masks work. And it didn’t take me that long to do it, either — I was masking up by May, I’d say. But that’s kind of how I got to know Maria. I’d been in WHO things with her, but it was really because Maria and I and a couple other colleagues, all women, were being attacked just constantly — especially about the WHO — about how we were all, quote unquote, “airborne deniers” who were minimizing the pandemic and pretending it wasn’t happening. And I was like, how could you literally say that about me? I was on TV every single day during the pandemic, talking about the pandemic. There was no way that I was not taking the pandemic seriously or trying to downplay its severity.

Did it make any difference?

I don’t think this airborne discussion is really of any consequence. It’s just another way that people can attack virologists and public health scientists.

Vincent: In the end, did it make any difference that we didn’t know about airborne long-distance transmission?

Angie: No, I think it didn’t, because I wrote a piece with one of my other colleagues who was more on my side of the airborne wars — we wrote a piece in Science in 2021, a perspective piece about what the real problem was. And I really think it’s the fact that it was transmitted pre-symptomatically. Whether it’s airborne or not, whether it’s large or small aerosol particles you’re inhaling — the fact that, unlike with SARS-1, we couldn’t identify people without testing them. And I didn’t like those nasopharyngeal swabs. Those suck. I did not like getting a deep nasal swab all the time to go anywhere, to get on a plane, to do a lot of the things we did during the pandemic. I did it, of course, but a lot of people aren’t going to do that. And I think that was one of the things that made it impossible for us to contain it. That’s what I keep worrying about with bird flu — that’s the key. If you don’t know you’re infected, you’re not going to wear a mask to begin with.

Vincent: And that’s why the spread is so insidious for SARS-CoV-2.

Angie: Exactly.

A 47-year-old woman named Angela

Vincent: So let me ask you — let’s use the word “airborne” to mean small particles going long distances. Is influenza virus airborne?

Angie: I feel the same way about Andes virus. One of the things that drove me just nuts — and they got out yesterday, thank God — but a woman was confined against her will by the Health and Human Services Secretary, just because he ordered her to, because the risk of airborne hantavirus was so high. How do we — I thought we don’t know anything about that transmission. So how can you say that?

Vincent: Well, he didn’t actually say that.

Angie: He pointed to other tweets. He didn’t give a reason for overruling the CDC medical quarantine officer and basically punitively putting this woman in quarantine jail in Nebraska for an extra week and a half, because she asked to go home and monitor her own symptoms in Florida. He wanted her to have a 24/7 armed guard watching over her, and Florida would not comply with that. So he said, you have to stay here, then, in Nebraska, under the Quarantine Act. And that really disturbs me, because that’s so removed from the reality of the risk this woman posed of hantavirus transmission. Also, she’s a 47-year-old woman named Angela, so I felt a great deal of empathy toward her, since I am also a 47-year-old woman named Angela. She’s just like me in that she’s running afoul of Secretary Kennedy over something he made up about virology. It’s the story of my life — or at least the last year of it. It’s crazy to me that you can just make something up about airborne transmission if there’s a knowledge gap, and if it’s scary enough, you can use it to do all sorts of things — like put somebody in quarantine prison, when you’re the health secretary. That’s not anything that’s happened in my lifetime, I’m pretty sure.

Vincent: So do we know how Andes virus is transmitted?

Angie: I think you breathe it in, and I think you breathe probably small or large particles depending on how briskly you’re sweeping your garage. I don’t know.

Vincent: Andes was spread at this birthday party in Argentina, right, with people sitting at different tables. So does that imply respiratory droplets or aerosols?

Angie: I don’t know that I trust “so-and-so was sitting here and so-and-so was sitting there for hours at a party.” I don’t know that I can triangulate every corner of the room and every person I stood next to if I’m inside a crowded party room. I think the cruise ship, and situations like that, and married couples getting it, show that you do get it by breathing it in from another person — but you have to be exposed to a lot of virus. My guess would be that you have to be in an enclosed space where enough virus can build up over a short enough period of time. I don’t have any idea what rate hantavirus stops becoming infectious at, but there will be that decay rate you’d have to deal with as well. So it’d probably have to be indoors. And I would imagine that any virus can be transmitted in the right circumstances, just like Ebola.

Vincent: Right, Ebola can be transmitted by the respiratory route, by breathing in small-particle aerosols.

Angie: But I would not call that virus airborne, because you can’t transmit it that way to another person — but you can get it that way. I feel like any virus could infect a host by any route if there are susceptible cells, and if the virus has the opportunity to get access to them, and if those cells are permissive.

Vincent: Yeah, it’s a big if, though, right?

Angie: It’s a big if. And hantaviruses, from what is known about them, preferentially infect the vascular endothelium. They don’t actually infect the epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract as much. And I can’t tell — I don’t think people have even done this much work on it — but hantavirus is one of these weird viruses that has multiple receptors. I feel like it’s HCV-esque, where it has to make contact with all sorts of things, and it’s tight junctions, and it’s not cytopathic, and it’s a real pain in the ass to work with. These syncytia-causing viruses — I don’t like these fusogenic ones. I like a nice, clean CPE, cytopathic effect. Some of these viruses, and hantavirus I think is one of them, are just not that cytopathic. And sometimes I wonder what that means in terms of how much shedding there could possibly be into the airway — if it’s moving laterally through a differentiated tissue, through tight junctions, it’s not on the apical surface to shed into the lumen. And if not that much virus is being made anyway — I have a real strong suspicion that hantavirus just doesn’t grow very well in a human host. I don’t know if anybody’s ever looked at hantavirus titers from somebody’s BAL fluid or something, but I’d be curious to see what levels of hantavirus people are even shedding. I feel like it’s not “42 days of hantavirus” everywhere, that’s for sure.

Measles is the poster child for airborne

Vincent: Okay, so let’s finish the situations. What about measles — is measles virus airborne? Remember, airborne is the smallest particles.

Angie: Measles virus is like the most airborne virus of them all. If any virus is airborne, measles is airborne.

Vincent: The poster child for airborne. Okay, influenza, though?

Angie: It’s a good question. Seema Lakdawala has done all this really incredible work to look at transmission, and I feel like flu, under the right circumstances, maybe could be long-distance transmitted airborne — but I think in most cases it doesn’t need to be. And that’s another thing people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about: they just sort of think viruses are always going to automatically evolve to get worse, to become more pathogenic no matter what, more transmissible. And it’s like — not really. I don’t see why hantavirus would need to become more transmissible in a human host, when the cells it infects are so deep in the lungs. It’s like with H5 — the only time there’s an incentive is if you end up in that host over and over again for some reason, but you’re not going to, because it doesn’t transmit that easily.

Vincent: We did Seema’s paper on TWiV recently, where she has this transmission apparatus — I don’t remember how many meters long — but there are cell culture dishes, and the person sits at one end and they talk or breathe or cough, and they see how far the virus goes that infects. Most of it is not near the end; it’s somewhere close to the middle, right? So that doesn’t go very far in those conditions. But then, who knows.

Angie: It all comes down to minimum infectious dose.

Vincent: Well, with measles you can get infected with one particle, but I can’t think of any other viruses that are anywhere near that infectious. It’s a leaky virus, but it’s not a human virus, so it doesn’t really matter.

Tony Fauci didn’t do anything wrong

Vincent: But that’s true. You mention another thing in your column — you talk a bit about Tony Fauci being charged for doing a bunch of things wrong. Can you talk a little about that, because that’s pretty scary?

Angie: To be clear, Tony Fauci didn’t do anything wrong. Tony Fauci was a dedicated public servant for more than 40 years, under presidents from both parties — six administrations, I think. So Fauci didn’t do anything wrong, but Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard and all of the extended, Russia-friendly MAHA/MAGA universe want to punish him, effectively, for the pandemic.

I used to think this was just about revenge. Rand Paul in particular hates Fauci, because Fauci and him got into it at a Senate hearing in 2022, where essentially Fauci told Rand Paul that he didn’t know what he was talking about, and Rand Paul called Fauci a liar. And it was about — guess what it was about, Vincent — it was about gain-of-function virology research.

Those reckless virologists are at it again. ... Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about. ... What we’re alleging is the gain-of-function research was going on in that lab, and NIH funded it. ... It meets your definition, and you are obfuscating the truth.

And it was of course about coronavirus research, chimeric coronaviruses, humanized mice, and so on and so forth. So Tony Fauci told him, correctly, that he didn’t know what he was talking about, because he didn’t. And Rand Paul’s had it out for him ever since.

Rand Paul is the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee in the Senate. And he’s been preparing for quite some time now to have these, effectively, witch trials for anybody who gets in his way. His number one target is Fauci. But I feel like if he can’t really get Fauci for anything — because of the preemptive pardon that Joe Biden issued to him — they’re going to try, and that’s what I think is going to happen now.

So Fauci was supposed to come in this week for a transcribed interview with just the Republicans from that committee, because for whatever reason Rand Paul decided to exclude the Democrats for the first time in the committee’s history, and Gary Peters, who is the ranking member, wrote a very angry email about how unprecedented it was. And Fauci canceled at the last minute — and I don’t blame him, because last week Tulsi Gabbard, on her way out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, dropped this bombshell reveal that’s actually just a bunch of emails of people talking to each other about the lab leak, for the most part, in the intelligence community — sometimes with Fauci. Francis Collins is there, Jeremy Farrar is there, all these people who are caught up in the lore of the origins of the pandemic and covering up the lab leak. And these documents show exactly nothing. I’ve been over all of them, and I’m working on a piece about it right now. They don’t prove the lab leak, they don’t prove a cover-up. They just prove that people were emailing each other and talking about the pandemic — which I would expect Tony Fauci to be doing all day, every day, in February of 2020. I would expect that to be the primary thing keeping him busy. And also having meetings with people like Ralph Baric. I do think that Tony Fauci should probably meet with America’s top coronavirologists in this situation.

So all of these innocuous things, Tony Fauci is being accused of as evidence that he funded dangerous gain-of-function research — which was basically just coronavirus bat research carried out by EcoHealth Alliance with an R01 grant, a basic project grant from NIH, that issued a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for like a couple hundred thousand dollars. And this has been turned into “it’s a vaccine bioweapon that Fauci was making with this network of foreign biolabs.” This is a very well-known piece of Russian propaganda, by the way, that Tulsi Gabbard has repeatedly distributed. And now people are using all this stuff, even though it’s completely made up, to go after Fauci.

What Rand Paul is going to do is try to get Fauci lying — from a time that has not exceeded the statute of limitations yet — so that he can try to overturn Joe Biden’s pardons. And if that happens, I think people really need to realize how much trouble we’re all in. Because if they do that to Tony Fauci, they’re going to do it to anybody they want who opposes them politically. And just by virtue of being a scientist, you oppose them politically — unless you’re willing to do bad MAHA science that’s going to be governed by political appointees. They’re already installing censors at NIH and at all the funding agencies. If you want to be a scientist who’s actually doing science and not propaganda, we need to do something about this right now. Because if they get Fauci, that’s curtains for democracy also. But it’s really bad for us in the scientific community.

The current lab leak theory

Vincent: So just the whole idea that they want to get Fauci on creating SARS-CoV-2 is so laughable, because as you said there is no evidence, and all the evidence points to a natural spillover. It’s crazy that people will actually buy this.

Angie: Vincent, when you hear what the current lab leak theory that Rand Paul is running with is, it’s just unbelievable to me.

Vincent: There’s a lot of gaps in it, because there’s no evidence.

Angie: But chasms. Gaping knowledge gaps here. But no problem making stuff up to fill in the blanks — just doing a little hand-waving. So this goes something like this: Zhengli Shi found a proto-SARS-2 in the Mojiang mine, maybe, and sent it to Ralph — or at least sent the sequence to Ralph — maybe. Somehow Ralph got his hands on it and cloned it and probably stuck a furin cleavage site in it, and then somehow Vincent Munster got his hands on it and started passaging it, serial passage, through Rousettus aegyptiacus bats.

The reason they picked those is because early on, I guess, they got some FOIA emails between Vincent and another collaborator talking about what kind of bats they could test. And I have to say, I was in a WHO preclinical model group with Vincent and basically everybody who worked on viral pathogenesis and coronaviruses at this time, and literally that’s what everybody was doing — everybody was like, what kind of animals can we get so we can start running pathogenesis studies? That’s why they were like, maybe we could get some Rousettus, because there are actually Rousettus aegyptiacus — Egyptian fruit bat — colonies in the U.S. They’re the normal reservoir for Marburg. But they’re unlikely to actually be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, and if they are, they probably don’t cause much disease. And I actually don’t think bats are very interesting at all for studying pathogenesis — not if the bat is its normal reservoir, because then you’re studying reservoir hosts and not pathogenesis. And I think reservoir hosts are more boring.

So this is just crazy stuff. In any other administration it wouldn’t even surface, because it’s nonsense, and intelligent scientists and public health people would be taking care of it. But we’re stuck with this one until maybe November, who knows.

We’re going to do it the fascist way

I think we just need to do whatever we can, because this is not the only mechanism that’s being used. Like I said, Kennedy is just making stuff up to literally imprison people. Some of our colleagues have been arrested and are facing years and years in federal prison for, at best, a paperwork error. We are seeing attacks on science from all sides.

I used to think, when that lab leak website came out — so COVID.gov changed from being a website where you could get information on COVID tests, and it became this insane lab leak site, with Trump striding out and this crazy font, it’s just wild — but it’s basically this COVID Select Subcommittee Republicans report, which is why it’s about lab leak, and it’s like, why am I reading about Andrew Cuomo? How did this get in here? And it’s because it’s from the COVID Select Subcommittee. That was when I realized that lab leak wasn’t just a crazy conspiracy theory that people were using to sell books. It was going to be used — essentially the way it has been used — to end research that the administration doesn’t like, which right now is virology, unless you’re one of their few preferred virologists. But it’s going to be everything. Bacteriology, full of dangerous pathogens too. How about those fungal people — some of those things, they hardly have any drugs to treat them. All kinds of stuff. And then it’ll extend to things like cancer, vaccine research, all of this stuff.

The way they’ve written the executive order — saying they’re improving safety and security of biological research, and making a “gold standard science” — could be interpreted to basically ban anything. And I think if they can say, “oh look, this research by a public servant in the old government caused a pandemic and made your life so miserable and your kids missed a year of school and it was horrible — get this guy,” and we’re not going to do it that way, we’re going to do it the fascist way, and see how much you like that better. I don’t think people will like that better, and I certainly will not like it better. So that’s why I feel like it’s really important to speak up about it now.

I’m not blaming the airborne debate for the rise of fascism, but it’s stuff like that — I think the divisiveness of some of the things during the pandemic that came about in these discussions. It was engineered, and we didn’t even really realize it. This disinformation has been so prevalent, and the groundwork to make us all angry at each other, to make us completely unreasonable, to make us communicate on social media instead of as reasonable people or colleagues — I think it’s been really destructive in terms of helping us unify against what’s coming. But I do feel like people are starting to recognize how serious the situation is. This is a generational challenge for all of us, and I’m really hoping we can put some of this stuff behind us.

I can’t believe this tweet from Kennedy: “Thank you, Tulsi, for documenting Dr. Fauci’s central role in causing the COVID pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history.” This is just lying outright. So the entire MAHA universe is calling for Fauci’s head right now, and most of the extreme congressional Republicans as well. They’re all repeating the same message, which is what makes me think we’re in for another cycle of Fauci show trials. And indeed, Rand Paul will be bringing him before the HSGAC in July, so we’re about to see a whole lot more of this.

I used to think it was just going to be the NIH, but I don’t think so. I think this is the tool that’s really going to be used to undo the government — to undo American democracy entirely. It sounds crazy to be saying that, but I really do think that as they’re able to one by one get people out of positions they’ve held for a long time — people who are dedicated, people who have the ability to resist this and to demonstrate what actual effective government and leadership looks like — those people are going to be eliminated. And it’s going to make it so hard for everybody to resist too, because they’re all going to be a lot sicker, since we aren’t going to have a health department anymore, we aren’t going to have basic infrastructure if this OMB rule change goes through and Russell Vought is allowed to steal basically the entire congressionally appropriated budget. There’s so many bad things going on right now, in terms of not just science but the undoing of essentially the American federal government. And I think that’s what people need to realize most: these people are destroying our government and our country. This is — we can’t be arguing about airborne. I’ll use “airborne” if you want. I’ll say airborne.

What can people do? Just talk about it

Vincent: So what can people do?

Angie: One thing people can do is actually just talk about it. One of the most striking things about going to this global health security conference was that nobody wanted to mention the U.S. — even Americans. People were really reluctant to mention the elephant in the room, that global health security is not in a great place right now because of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the WHO. And the U.S. is basically withdrawing from all foreign aid in this move to bilateral agreements — which, for those of you who don’t follow global health policy, it’s not my favorite topic either. But the WHO is a multilateral organization that serves all of its member states. The U.S. has rejected that, in favor of making one-on-one deals with every country, and that effectively allows the U.S. to shake these countries down, as they did with Kenya, which depends on the U.S. for 70 percent of its health ministry’s budget. And that’s why they let them build a field hospital to imprison Americans who’ve been exposed potentially to Bundibugyo ebolavirus there. It is just one thing after another.

One of the things I’ve found that is the hardest thing to do is to just explain it all to people who aren’t scientists. I start explaining what goes on with a grant, or what goes on with NIH, or “Fauci issued a subaward to” — and people don’t know what I’m talking about, and it’s boring, and they tune out. But it’s a lot of background that I have to explain. So if people want to do something, they can seriously just talk about it with other people. And there’s plenty of non-science stuff to talk about, too.

I truly think one of the biggest problems we’ve had is people being too polite to say things that I guess they wouldn’t say on Twitter. And maybe it’s because I’ve been living in Canada also, but people don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to be the one who’s causing a problem, who’s being difficult, who’s messing it up for everybody else. And I’ve never been afraid to be that person, Vincent, so now’s my time to shine. You don’t have to do it like me, but just talking about it — talking about how it’s affecting you and making other people aware of it — helps. People are in denial. It’s a normal survival mechanism to be in denial about really traumatic things, and this is probably the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to us as a society, so it’s fine to not want to think about it. But as much capacity as you have for thinking about it, and as much capacity as you have for speaking up about it, every little bit helps. Because a democracy is a government by the people, and the people have to participate. So any type of participation — but definitely, if you can vote in November, you’d better make sure you’re registered. I’m certainly going to be voting in Washington State.

Vincent: All right. I’ll put a link to Angie’s column, Rasmussen Retorts. That’s Rasmussen Retorts with Angie Rasmussen. Thank you, Angie.

Angie: Thank you, Vincent.

Links from this episode

• We Have Always Been at War with AIRBORNE — Angie’s Rasmussen Retorts column

• High SARS-CoV-2 Attack Rate Following Exposure at a Choir Practice — Skagit County, Washington, March 2020 — CDC MMWR, the Skagit Valley Chorale outbreak.

• Andes virus / MV Hondius hantavirus event explainer — CNN, on the Andes strain and how it spreads.

• Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1 — van Doremalen et al., NEJM 2020 (the RML nebulizer study).

• SARS-CoV-2 transmission without symptoms — Science 2021 perspective on pre-symptomatic transmission (Rasmussen et al.).

• “Super-Spreaders” and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina — NEJM, the Epuyén birthday-party outbreak.

• RFK Jr. orders hantavirus-cruise passenger to remain in Nebraska quarantine, overruling CDC — CNN.

• Fauci–Rand Paul gain-of-function clash, Senate hearing — CNBC (see flag on date below).

• Why the COVID-19 documents Gabbard released don’t prove her claims about Fauci — CNN.

• Biden pardons Fauci, Milley and members of the Jan. 6 panel — NPR, on the preemptive pardon.

• Controlled human influenza infection reveals heterogeneous expulsion of infectious virus into air — Lakdawala group, Cell 2026 (the transmission-apparatus work discussed on TWiV).

• Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 and Worobey et al., Huanan market as the early epicenter — the natural-spillover evidence.

• Executive Order: Restoring Gold Standard Science — White House.

• OMB “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” proposed rule — Federal Register (the rule change Angie references; comment docket).

• COVID.gov — the current lab-leak landing page.

Is Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dead? Paramedics were called to his home on June 14 to respond to a cardiac arrest. He was taken to the hospital, where he has been ever since. For more than a week now, there has been increasingly vigorous speculation that he is either brain dead or actually dead.

McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao in President Donald J. Trump’s first administration, went to China within three days and hasn’t been to her husband’s bedside. Despite rumors that she fled to China because she’s a spy, she’s back now and says McConnell wasn’t sick enough for her to cancel a business trip.

There was a flurry of wagon-circling from Republicans who all insist they’ve spoken with McConnell and he’s just as much of a disagreeable, unprincipled sourpuss as ever. He’s eager to get back to work obstructing the Senate’s work on behalf of the American people, as he told CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), and Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-WY). They all have claimed to have caught up with McConnell by phone, though they declined to provide any evidence of those conversations. McConnell’s office did not respond directly regarding MAGA Uber-influencer Laura Loomer’s concerns that he is “officially brain dead.”

McConnell’s absence is becoming an increasing problem for Republicans, who barely muster the votes to pass Trump’s increasingly deranged budget requests as it is. Until McConnell returns, the Republicans are down one vote for their priorities. To make matters worse for them, if McConnell is too incapacitated to function, then a replacement will be appointed by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who is a Democrat. Beshear would appoint a Democrat to replace McConnell, giving the Democrats an additional vote until the election in November. Beshear wants to know if he can do his job or not and sent a letter to McConnell’s office asking him to check in and wishing him a speedy recovery.

The Republicans don’t want to be in a position where they unable to facilitate Trump’s legislative demands. Any of their ranks who dare betray Trump know that they’ll be primaried or excommunicated from the Church of MAGA altogether. Maybe even worse. What are the Senate Republicans to do?

Get the influencer fabulists in here to distract people with some dangerous and idiotic discourse on polio vaccines because McConnell had polio and why not?!

Got a podcast for every issue, even Medically Incapacitated Mitch

MAHA influencer Alex Clark hosts a “health and wellness podcast” called Culture Apothecary. She may mean both culture and apothecary in the scientific sense, because she advocates for unproven remedies as alternatives to tested, licensed vaccines and medicines and is encouraging her followers to put themselves at risk of preventable infectious diseases.

Her health advice is “rooted in conservative values,” which based on her website appears to mean cosplaying Megan Fox in Transformers, working hard on advancing her own clinically obvious case of Mar-a-Lago face, and ensuring that people are as misinformed as possible about the medical decisions they will make for themselves and their children. Peter McCullough is a disgraced former cardiologist turned ivermectin cartel boss who started an anti-vax research institute he named after himself that sells memberships to his wellness company that then sells things like supplement “protocols” for spike detoxification. Basically, this is a bunch of various untested supplements and vitamins that will do nothing to detoxify the spike protein that you aren’t shedding because spike protein isn’t toxic and sustained spike overexpression is completely made up.

Clark and McCullough filmed an interview at Turning Point USA in late May that is now being resurrected in the context of McConnell. McConnell is a polio survivor. As a result he is vocally supportive of immunization. Clark and McCullough both are avowed vaccine haters, so this means McConnell’s polio is something to exploit for disinformation purposes.

Clark notes that old folks like McCullough have the right idea with regard to hating other childhood vaccines like the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, but they all still seem to think the inactivated polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk and colleagues is great. Even Trump likes the Salk vaccine. What’s the deal with that?

Count McCullough out of the polio booster boomers group! McCullough says that actually, polio was mostly made up, including by Mitch McConnell. McConnell had polio when he was two and as a result is prone to falls due to his affected leg. This has become an increasing problem as he has aged. It’s unclear what led to cardiac arrest or if it has anything to do with his polio-related disability. It may be just because he is 84! McConnell’s experience with polio is why he voted against confirming Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Health and Human Services Secretary. It’s one of the very few job-related actions McConnell has taken that I approve of.

“I'm a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I've watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

-Sen. Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2025

McCullough claimed that he looked up McConnell’s hometown and there were no reported cases of polio, claiming “people imagined various neurologic problems were, in fact, polio.” He presents this as evidence that McConnell had imaginary polio or was misdiagnosed. Since McCullough is a known liar, I decided to see if that was true.

When McConnell got polio in 1944, he was living in Five Points, Alabama (according to Wikipedia). I was unable to find reporting on polio cases specifically for Five Points, but I did find an article from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before they were even called that on cases of polio nationwide that breaks it down by county.

Oh, look, it’s not zero reported cases. Across Alabama in 1944, there were about 4 cases of polio for every 100,000 people. In Five Points, there were 10-19 cases per 100,000 people. It had one of the highest rates of polio in Alabama in 1944.

Dauer, Public Health Reports, 1945

4.44MB ∙ PDF file

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Across the country, polio cases were soaring. McCullough’s assertion that McConnell was “misdiagnosed” with polio is as unscientific as it gets. It’s also repulsive and dehumanizing to suggest that a polio survivor’s lifelong struggle with their disability is a figment of their imagination. Polio is a horrific disease and it’s not possible to fake poliomyelitis. It causes lifelong disability because of how poliovirus causes disease.

Polio is transmitted by the oral-fecal route. Poliovirus primarily replicates in the cells that line the intestines, but in some cases gets into the motor neurons nearby. The virus kills these motor neurons, which are irreplaceable. They do not grow back. If enough of them get infected and die, you lose muscle control because the connection between your muscles and central nervous system is permanently severed. Poliomyelitis (paralytic polio) is incurable. If the motor neurons controlling your legs go, you will have paralysis in that leg. You may be able to rehabilitate it partially—McConnell did through extensive treatment at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute in Georgia. But if the motor neurons controlling your diaphragm die, you will spend the rest of your life in an iron lung. Either that or the rest of your life will be very short, since you won’t be able to breathe.

McConnell’s leg was paralyzed by poliomyelitis caused by a poliovirus infection destroying the motor neurons that control his leg. It is incurable. His doctors didn’t imagine it or misdiagnose him. McConnell had polio and has lived with his injuries from having polio for more than eight decades. More than 19,000 American children had paralytic poliomyelitis in 1944. More than 1,300 children died from it.

Polio was a terrifying disease during this time. The virus itself goes through the highly acidic stomach to get to the gut where it replicates, so it has evolved to be very resistant to extreme environments. It is non-enveloped and extremely hardy. It can persist and remain infectious in the environment for long periods of time. It grows to high titers in many different cell types (polio is a terrible disease, but poliovirus is a beautiful virus to work with from a technical standpoint). It spreads easily.

Most people who are infected with poliovirus don’t get very sick if the virus stays in their gut and doesn’t find its way to their motor neurons, so exposure risk was much higher than case counts would suggest because people would be silently shitting live poliovirus into the sewer system, sometimes for long periods of time. Outbreaks occurred at swimming pools and community events and were frequent in the summer. Not washing hands, changing diapers, kids having accidents, playing outside…every parent knows how literally shitty kids can be sometimes. Imagine summer break being months of constant fear for your children’s lives. Salk’s polio vaccine was not licensed until 1955. The idea that polio was usually invented by the doctors and nurses and families of thousands of children permanently disabled or killed by polio is appalling.

However, this noxious video is making the rounds again, because grifting never sleeps. The “conservative values” that people like Alex Clark and Peter McCullough claim is at the heart of their approach to health include never missing an opportunity for wellness profiteering and distributing anti-vax propaganda. As a result, we get treated to an extended lecture on how polio is a hoax and we should just stop vaccinating.

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Grifters gonna grift

Of course, polio vaccines didn’t take up nearly an hour and a half of these two yakking. Besides taking regular breaks for Clark to pitch various sponsored snake oil products and MAHA merch, they covered all the main propaganda points: mRNA vaccines are bad, vaccines cause autism, illegally imprisoning Americans exposed to infectious diseases through no fault of their own is good, and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci caused the pandemic by funding gain-of-function research in “the Wuhan lab.” McCullough delivers an extended analysis of his version of how the pandemic began, which is completely out of touch with reality and also showcases his woeful ignorance about the entire field of virology.

It’s surreal watching a pro-fascist Bratz doll with an unlimited filler budget and a tacky lip kit and a sentient empty ivermectin bottle stuffed with $100 bills discuss molecular virology methods for inserting furin cleavage sites into McCullough’s mortal enemy (spike protein). Yet, here we are, where I am silently correcting Alex Clark’s assessment of optimal coronavirus cloning techniques and understanding of phylogenetics. Once again, it wasn’t a goddamn lab leak.

It’s notable that this podcast came out just before outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dropped the giant Fauci files “bombshell,” which was the declassification equivalent of lighting a brown paper lunch sack full of dog shit on fire on someone’s porch, ringing the doorbell, and running away. The only problem is, instead of getting shit on your shoes, this is going to send people to jail for being politically problematic. That, in turn, assaults American democracy.

All of these efforts are targeted at consolidating power and money within the Executive Branch. It doesn’t seem related to vaccines or McConnell’s health on the surface, but that’s why it’s working so well. An area like science that is technically complex, boring, and outside of most people’s capacity for emerging horror is great for propaganda. They can tell great stories—lab leak in Wuhan! mRNA vaccines kill! polio is imaginary!—because they are not constrained by the truth. The point of the stories is to fill a knowledge gap with one main point: the old government is your enemy. The old government is untrustworthy. The old government makes deadly vaccines and pandemics and covers it up. The old government has to go. They were radicals, or terrorists, or antifa, or communists. Anyone who thinks otherwise is one too. And they are America’s enemies. Even if they are Americans who are solely exercising the freedoms that make America great.

America is not America if we allow the current administration to further tear apart our government. Whatever the state of Mitch McConnell’s health, we should focus on demanding transparency from his office for the sake of our democracy. We must recognize how dangerous this is, not only in terms of health, but in terms of the continued survival of our democracy. We cannot allow one sketchy political maneuver—like concealing whether McConnell’s thought his last curdled, outdated, short-sighted coherent thought—to justify advancing fascism and further degrade government function and demonize democracy itself. We must not allow regime mouthpieces like Clark and McCullough to exploit the lack of transparency from McConnell’s office to spread more anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti-reality falsehoods unchallenged.

And regarding McConnell: whatever is going on with him it’s not imaginary polio. Show proof of life to someone other than Scott Jennings or let Governor Beshear do his duty for the people of Kentucky and appoint his replacement as he is obligated to do.

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An Idaho mother has been charged with murdering her two toddlers and blaming it on a vaccine injury. It’s a truly tragic situation, whatever the story behind it. There aren’t very many details, but what is known is terrible. I wish it weren’t so predictable.

Two toddlers are dead. A week after they died, their parents appeared on Children’s Health Defense (CHD) TV implicating half of the childhood recommended vaccine schedule in their deaths. Now, their mother is accused of killing them, by suffocation according to this report and implied by the mother herself. CHD is now reporting that the real crime here is law enforcement ignoring the mother’s concerns about vaccines and instead charging her with first-degree murder.

Some of the details that we do know aren’t very consistent with a vaccine injury. How did two fraternal twins, both of whom had tolerated scheduled vaccines previously, both develop an extremely complex clinical case of spontaneous suffocation over the course of eight days when they both died at the same time on the same day? That’s possible, but seems unlikely. Vaccine injuries can occur. They are usually rapid onset, within a few hours of vaccination. Even if both children sustained the same severe vaccine injury at the same time, it’s odd that they would both slowly deteriorate over the course of more than a week—with multiple doctors repeatedly dismissing two increasingly hypoxic 18-month-old babies gasping for breath—and then die simultaneously.

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This story seemed awfully familiar. Where have I seen parents of children who recently died talking about how much they hate and distrust vaccination before? Oh right. CHD.TV.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed by the Senate on February 13, 2025, barely two weeks after measles exploded in West Texas, causing an outbreak that has not ended since. It rapidly turned into a constellation of outbreaks lighting up as measles finds its way from one undervaccinated community to another.

When a child died in Texas, CHD interviewed her parents, who are members of a Mennonite community with a culture of vaccine skepticism. CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker and CHD.TV Director Polly Tommey stuck CHD microphones in their faces and asked about whether they would recommend the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, given all five of their children got measles and their six-year-old daughter died from it.

Now, before you go blaming the parents for their “well, 4/5 of our kids survived” attitude toward vaccination, consider the parasites who staged and filmed the interview. Kennedy founded CHD, and although he stepped down in 2023 for his presidential campaign, he still has obvious influence there.

Kennedy founded CHD as an environmental nonprofit, but for the last twenty years, it’s been one of the most powerful anti-vax players in the game. For years, CHD has relentlessly churned out propaganda via one of their many media outlets: The Defender (newsletter), CHD.TV, Kennedy’s books and podcasts, and via their large network of partner organizations and MAHA celebrity influencers.

CHD is part of a tightly coordinated and very well-funded ecosystem of anti-vax organizations. They now effectively operate as an unofficial vehicle for spreading MAHA propaganda. As soon as measles was in West Texas, CHD was there with cameras rolling. They sent their measles A-team to lie about the risks of measles and discourage people from getting the MMR, which is 97% effective at preventing measles.

Polly Tommey is a producer of several films in the Vaxxed series. Brian Hooker was so committed to spreading pro-measles propaganda that he claimed he got measles in Texas and bragged he got on a plane while contagious.

These two and their crew ingratiated themselves in the Mennonite community, getting better access to patients and exposed cases than public health officials, who were being thwarted by funding cuts and havoc at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) caused by Kennedy himself. Amy Maxmen reported in KFF Health News that the negative impact of the DOGE cuts and Kennedy’s edicts and draconian policies were compounded by the fact that the CDC simply wouldn’t answer the phone when local health officials called. From the very start, as Kennedy has thwarted outbreak responses, CHD has provided him with all the emotionally manipulative propaganda he needs for cover.

In April 2025, Kennedy attended the funeral of a second Mennonite child who died from measles, whose father also disavowed vaccines. He also thinks the MMR doesn’t work. While there, Kennedy and CHD wasted no time redirecting locals from getting reliable information about measles vaccination to Ben Edwards, West Texas’ top anti-vax concierge physician podcaster and vitamin A dealer. Edwards is so pro-measles that he appeared in a CHD video treating patients while he had a visible measles rash on his face. Edwards charges out-of-pocket for office visits where he prescribes cod liver oil and steroids for measles, despite neither of these being shown to work. He, like Kennedy and CHD, downplay the severity of measles. They contend that the two measles deaths were from medical interventions, not from measles.

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How many deaths are we willing to tolerate?

Kennedy and CHD aren’t directly murdering people, but in my opinion they bear responsibility for these deaths. Whether from measles or murder, more and more people—including children—are dead as a direct result of the propaganda that they have spread. I’ve been trying to keep track of the body count and it’s not a trivial task. Here are some of the most obvious and quantifiable:

Kennedy, as leader of CHD, wanted to conduct a “natural experiment” in Samoa where he would see what happened when measles was allowed to spread in an unvaccinated population. He may have lied about his work in Samoa to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. I can see why he’d want to downplay his role in orchestrating and actively encouraging the epidemic, because his experiment had the same result as all other observed results of massive measles outbreaks: confirmed lethal. Eighty-three people died, mostly babies and toddlers. BODY COUNT: 83

A man who reportedly believed he had been injured by a COVID-19 vaccine fired 500 rounds at the CDC and killed a police officer. Despite his rhetoric directly causing a domestic terror attack on federal employees, it took Kennedy a full day to even reach out to CDC Director Susan Monarez. He fired Monarez two and a half weeks later when she refused to rubber stamp his intent to erase most of the recommended childhood vaccine schedule. BODY COUNT: 83 84 RIP Officer David Rose, who died in the line of duty protecting my colleagues

CHD and Kennedy downplayed the severity of measles in Texas. They convinced grieving parents to say that vaccines are harmful on camera and to the press. That their children were killed by doctors and medicine, not measles virus. CHD wrote articles arguing that the children died because of medical treatment they received at the hospital (ventilation), not because of the measles that put them there in the first place. They discouraged vaccination and redirected people to quack doctors who prescribed ineffective treatments and exposed them to greater risk. In addition to the two girls in Texas who died, one unvaccinated adult in New Mexico also died. BODY COUNT: 84 87

Andrea Shaw was charged with first-degree murder after allegedly suffocating her twins. Less than a week after their deaths, Andrea appeared on CHD.TV with her husband Nathaniel to explain that they died from vaccine injuries. Currently CHD.TV is presenting Andrea’s case as one of the police framing her to cover up for Big Pharma. BODY COUNT: 87 89

As Kennedy (and CHD) approaches the 100 casualty count mark, things only have the potential to get worse. Now Kennedy can effect policy, which is scaled to have consequences for millions. Kennedy is very, very good at working behind the scenes administratively to achieve his goals. CHD is always there to provide him as much propaganda as he needs along the way.

Kennedy and CHD are highly effective in getting people to believe that institutions are untrustworthy and vaccines are their instruments of control. Andrea Shaw was obviously influenced heavily by CHD. The murder charges against her suggest that her appearance on CHD.TV shortly after their deaths was an attempt to evade responsibility for killing them rather than concerns about vaccines. This case is a tragic example of how the anti-vax movement does not defend children’s health at all. They deliberately distribute propaganda that puts children at far greater risk. I think we need to start asking ourselves how much of this risk we are willing to tolerate.

Measles is surpassing last year’s total case count, with no end in sight. Ongoing measles invariably means more deaths. One need look no further than Lena Sun’s Washington Post piece from today for a stark reminder of where we are at: more measles, faster.

This is a direct result of both policies that Kennedy has implemented more recently (restructuring CDC, firing people, and destroying outbreak response capacity) and propaganda he and CHD have spread (they’ve successfully put vaccination rates into decline nearly everywhere they have sunk effort into it).

At what point are we going to acknowledge that the HHS Secretary, who is charged with protecting the nation’s health and who claims to be Making America Healthy Again, is causing more people to die? He and the organization he founded are actively working toward an America ridden with epidemics of preventable disease. A less secure and more malnourished America. A more broke and less prosperous America. A less healthy and more dead America. An America in which we all just accept that other Americans must die because the deranged weirdo leathern eugenicist at MAHA HQ wants to do (poorly designed and uncontrolled, in my professional opinion) “natural experiments.”

This goes beyond impeaching Kennedy. He does need to be removed from office as soon as possible, but beyond that, he and organizations like CHD need to stop being accepted. They are actively convincing Americans to make medical decisions that will harm themselves and their families. They are, in some cases, convincing Americans to commit acts of terrorism and murder.

We need to stop accepting that this is some kind of respectable dissent, or a new way of doing things, or that the solution is to talk to MAHA people more so we can build trust. The leader of the MAHA movement is a cabinet secretary who works for all Americans, and his actions and rhetoric are killing Americans. He should not be censored. He should be stopped. He and CHD should be held accountable for their actions.

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On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Task Force kicked off its MK Ultra “investigation” led by Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). Luna, along with her fellow party faithful, wasted two hours and who knows how much taxpayer money gabbing about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) infamous attempt at developing mind control techniques.

During this hearing, two of the witnesses and Congresspeople asking them questions really put their imaginations to work as they got to the bottom of a seventy-year-old program that was dumb to start with. They started with things that have been known for decades: the CIA did recruit Nazi doctors through Operation Paperclip (itself a rich vein for mining conspiracy theories). They were afraid that the doctors and scientists who weren’t convicted and hanged at Nuremberg might take their evil Nazi secrets to the Soviets, so the Army offered them jobs instead. It’s also true that some of these Nazis did work on MK Ultra projects. But that’s where the facts end and the fantasy begins.

The CIA were everywhere back in the day and they were getting up to all sorts of terrible, unethical, and totally illegal things. This is not news. MK Ultra was a real program. It was appalling, based on the records that the CIA itself has made available. The guys who ran it not only had stupid and scientifically implausible goals for doing all sorts of silly, scifi mind control things with hypnosis, LSD, various amphetamines, and “radio waves.” Sometimes they drugged people and they got hurt or died. They drugged military personnel, psychiatric patients, and prisoners. These are facts established for decades.

Yet the head of the program, a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb, said that it didn’t work. All that nonconsensual human experimentation and nothing to show for it but a bunch of records so shameful that the director, Richard Helms, ordered all the research records incinerated when he retired in 1973. Gottlieb destroyed them all. We will likely never know all the atrocities carried out by Gottlieb and the CIA under MK Ultra and related projects because of this. We know there was a lot more than we have records for.

In theory, that is why Luna convened this task force: to uncover any remaining secrets that might be found in classified documents and achieve “accountability.” It’s implied this will mean some form of justice for MK Ultra victims. Most are unidentified. They are all long-dead, as are all the people who perpetrated these crimes. MK Ultra happened 70 years ago. Since there is nobody alive to hold accountable, the US government will be to blame. Not the current leaders of the government—the government itself. The only solution will be to dismantle it and build something new and considerably less democratic.

This is why we will continue to endure investigations into any batshit conspiracy theory, no matter how tired or stagnant, that can be rejiggered to achieve a modern political goal. MK Ultra ended more than fifty years ago. It failed to develop mind control, because the idea was stupid and impossible from the start. MK Ultra was horrible, but not relevant to the horrors we currently face.

The hearing itself comprised two of the most useless hours of my life. I learned nothing new about MK Ultra, but I did learn a lot about how severely Luna and her colleagues are willing to debase themselves and their offices in their zeal to betray their constituents and their country.

ICYMI the MK Ultra body count now includes Charlie Kirk

The hearing itself was almost beyond belief in terms of what was said with a straight face. One of the experts, journalist Tom O’Neill, testified that Charles Manson was a CIA asset, who MK Ultra scientists enabled to continue murdering because they wanted to learn his hippie cult leader mind control secrets. He has written a book making the same claims. When asked directly if he could prove this, he was unable to offer evidence to support the claim and called it “theoretical.” He’d be able to prove it, surely, if only he could get hold of the documents that he’s never seen but he’s certain must exist.

In addition to that, murders and assassinations have been carried out by MK Ultra subjects at the CIA’s behest. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who may have been MK Ultra’ed. In turn, he was assassinated by Jack Ruby, who was either also MK Ultra’ed or was just about to blow the whistle on the whole operation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also assassinated thanks to MK Ultra methods. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) confidently noted that James Earl Ray was a “third-rate thief” who “made an incredible shot.” This can never be proven, since a hedge outside the “flophouse” where Ray was got trimmed before the MK Ultra forensics team could come do a full work-up. MK Ultra historian Stephen Kinzer declined to full-throatedly endorse this view, but did note there was an FBI “climate” against King. It could have happened, right…?

There were reports of other deaths (O’Neill separately claimed that an airman murdered a 3 year old “in a trance” while experimentally being MK Ultra’ed and the deaths reached into the tens of thousands) and “black sites” in foreign countries. Apparently the Operation Paperclip Nazis weren’t the only Germans involved. The US was also working with the new non-Nazi German government in the 1950s, according to O’Neill, who offered as proof anecdotal reports that he heard when taking a tour of a German “chalet” where people were “experimented to death.” While Cold War-era black sites in Germany did exist, it’s unclear that it’s established the German government was in on it and that’s why the surrounding forest is full of bodies in unmarked graves. Kinzer claimed Gottlieb had a “license to kill” and that CIA officers in foreign countries requested “expendables” (people who wouldn’t be missed) for their experiments.

Luna claimed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) provided cover for CIA MK Ultra assassins in Vietnam. She went on to further claim that USAID was a vehicle for mind control at scale. Instead of distributing food, medicine, and vaccines, USAID was actually experimenting on the people it claimed to be helping with foreign aid. Good thing USAID is no more!

Nearly everyone in the hearing talked about “programming” via radio waves, “direct energy weapons” per Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), poisoned bread per Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), and algorithms and computer usage according to Burchett. The MK Naomi program, which was a CIA x Army collab, made mind control bioweapons, for MK Ultra-ing entire populations. Social media was also implicated, which was probably the only thing they got right at all, except it was in the context of “Democrats are using social media to MK Ultra people against Trump and we need to stop it at once.”

That was the point of the hearing. Once the conspiracy theories of the past were introduced as factual evidence, the next questions for O’Neill and Kinzer concerned the present: did they, the hand-picked witnesses invited by the Republicans, think MK Ultra really ever ended?

They both think MK Ultra is still going on today, as did every single Congressperson in the hearing. O’Neill discussed “mass conversion,” a popular idea in the New World Order globalist conspiracy theory universe that suggests mind control can occur at population scale. This is better known as the Great Replacement theory, the racist idea that immigrants (usually people who are not white, Muslims, and Jews) are deliberately superseding the native-born white men that this regime values above all else. Unsurprisingly, nearly all of the task force members seem to agree with it!

O’Neill also claimed that the CIA succeeded in erasing and implanting memories. They must have hit him with the MK Ultra memory eraser as to where he left the evidence supporting that claim. But probably the biggest tell was directly linking MK Ultra to two icons of the regime: Trump and Charlie Kirk. Burchett floated the idea that both Trump’s attempted assassin in Butler, PA and Charlie Kirk’s murderer were “programmed” by radio waves and some sort of unspecified “computer activity.” Zero evidence was offered to support either of these claims.

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I was told this meeting was going to be about CIA mind control

Former NIH Senior Program Official and social psychologist told me a few days ahead of time the Democrats asked her to appear in her capacity as an expert on federally funded studies involving human subjects. Ranking member Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) was out sick and this is a “task force” the Republicans assembled to conduct investigations into scandals they made up. They don’t have the power to really do anything besides ask questions of people who voluntarily show up to testify. Liz was on her own, but she still showed up. Even though she is no longer a public servant, she still does her duty for the American people she served during her time in government.

Liz spoke about the catastrophic damage inflicted by cuts to NIH, where she worked as a senior program official for more than twenty years, and the direct impact of those cuts to US response capacity. She talked about how these cuts have devastated our most basic capacity to respond to disease outbreaks and crippled our ability to compete in scientific innovation. She spoke about the harm these destructive cuts would do to human participants in clinical trials. Unlike MK Ultra, these would harm Americans participating voluntarily in studies of lifesaving new cancer and Alzheimer’s drugs. But the Tinfoil Hat Task Force did not want to talk about any of that.

Mostly they wanted to ask leading questions about whether or not former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci started the pandemic via a dinky subaward on a R01 grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Uh oh, more of that DANGEROUS GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH that we reckless virologists so adore. Not that a single one of the people shouting about it could define what that is. Instead they just repeated their message over and over again, demanding that Liz answer bad faith questions for which the correct answer is politically wrong.

Liz was repeatedly heckled by pearl-clutching Republicans about how nobody trusts NIH anymore after the pandemic: Lockdowns (that didn’t happen)! Vaccine injury epidemic (that didn’t happen)! mRNA vaccines killed people (that didn’t happen)! Lab leak (that didn’t happen)! Fauci did crimes against humanity (that didn’t happen)! All of the horrors that the Biden administration wrought on America were presented in their usual repetitive and completely unsupported glory.

Eli Crane went so hard at Liz that he got applause when he demanded that she speak for all of NIH on why science has lost the public’s trust and admit that it was Fauci and the lockdowns and the mandates and the pandemic. The government screwed it all up. The government is your enemy.

This is the face Nancy Mace made when she asked Liz whether she’d ever asked Fauci if he funded the lab leak. It’s the same face she made triumphantly when Liz admitted she’d never asked him “did you make COVID and lab leak it?” when she ran into him at the NIH water cooler, and again when Liz said that the Party’s version of events wasn’t her understanding, and again and again.

Mace lost her primary, by the way, so this and all of her public appearances until her term ends will be an audition for her next role as a pro-Big Brother lobbyist. After haranguing Liz for not getting Fauci’s confession—who she was in the same room with four times in more than twenty years (I asked)—Mace’s triumph was complete when Liz truthfully said she is not a MK Ultra expert and was instead asked by “the Dems” (per Mace) to speak about human subjects protections.

As a research psychologist who oversaw nearly a billion dollars’ worth of NIH-funded research during her career, Liz is a subject matter expert on human subjects research. Mace made the ultimate Mace face, then abruptly shifted to O’Neill and Kinzer, who were only too happy to resume jabbering about speculative MK Ultra atrocities that they can’t wait to write their next books about. If anything is unwelcome at these hearings, it’s actual expertise. Can’t let those boring facts get in the way of a good story!

Still, Liz’s presence was the only thing that brought any semblance of accountability to this circus. The fact that she was attacked rather than ignored suggests how afraid these collaborators are that the public will hold them accountable before the government has been fully dismantled and authoritarian power is secured. We had a nice long chat about it here and Liz also wrote a great essay about it:

The stupidity is hard to overlook but it’s also an act

It’s sometimes hard to believe that anyone could degrade themselves as a dignified, moral human being who takes their elected office seriously by cosplaying as a slack-jawed idiot in a tinfoil hat talking about Biden’s/”the Dems’” deep state Cold War mind control tactics to take out Charlie Kirk in the halls of Congress. But that’s precisely what these Republicans are doing. What they are doing comes across as profound stupidity, but it is not stupid. It is propaganda. It is working.

The government is not perfect, but in a democracy it is not the enemy of the people. The American government is the people. It operates in the people’s interests. It is funded by the people and it exists to serve them. By casting the government as the enemy of the people, it is easier to justify its destruction. By using boring, policy-mediated mechanisms of destruction like mass reductions in force and withholding funds in various forms of bureaucratic purgatory while simultaneously acting like their constituents elected them to make Congress more like an episode of InfoWars.

This has been brutally effective at dismantling our government’s ability to function. We can see the effects: unchecked measles, with outbreak control nowhere in sight. Resurgent New World screwworm, endangering our food supply. Millions lost health insurance and supplemental nutrition support. The education system is being dismantled. And this is happening in the intelligence community, as well as throughout the federal government. When former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard left office, her successor Bill Pulte began firing people at Trump’s command.

Just yesterday, Trump bragged that Pulte’s short tenure will allow him to focus on declassifying all the deep state secrets he has promised to root out. It’s much more palatable to claim that Pulte was installed to reveal unspecified buried truths than admitting that he is deliberately gutting our national intelligence capabilities.

This has continued despite protests that acting DNIs are not authorized to eliminate an agency’s entire org chart or have such broad declassification powers. It has continued throughout the US government, including at NIH, where grant awards have cratered relative to the budget. Most recently, installing political censors to ensure grants align with “presidential priorities” has forced thousands of NIH grants into a potentially eternal state of administrative limbo. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, Project 2025 author, Christofascist prick, and current attempted thief of more than one trillion in federal grant money has a single goal: to cross out the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution and claim one of the last standing checks against a dictatorship, the Congressional power of the purse. The only way he can do this is if the American people tolerate it.

Grants are boring. Government bureaucracy is boring. Combing through declassified documents for 70-year-old metadata that might reveal incrementally more information about MK Ultra is boring. It is only not boring if you make up a wild story about it; plausibility is no limitation. If that story serves to distract an exhausted, heavily propagandized public from the boring but consequential restructuring of our democracy behind the scenes, then it graduates to a performative attempt to legitimize it, such as a House Oversight Task Force hearing that is meant to give Congressional cover to lies.

MK Ultra was a failure, but it revealed some truths that people like Russell Vought obviously paid attention to: you don’t need LSD to control people’s minds. Joseph Stalin, the leader of our Cold War enemy that inspired MK Ultra in the first place, figured out that controlling information is much more effective, especially if you can deal with skeptics using authoritarian brutality.

If you want to control what people are going to think, you tell them what you want them to think. You do it over and over until most people just think what they’ve heard must be the truth. After all, it was serious enough to warrant a Congressional investigation. Most people won’t question it. The ones who do, well…if the regime in power continues to get away with this unchecked, they will have the authoritarian power to use brutality to enforce the Party position. Remember ICE? The more we tolerate Congresspeople blatantly lying for political purposes, the more we will have to tolerate them too. The greatest danger lies in our complacency, which the regime is doing everything to encourage. If we are too exhausted to think critically and to be skeptical of what we have heard from known liars, we will accept it until it is too late to do anything about it.

Regrettably, it is now clear that America’s slide to fascist doom will take the stupidest, most clownish possible route. We must remember that under the tin foil hat is something truly frightening and antithetical to everything I understand America to be. On the eve of our fair nation’s 250th birthday, as wrath of God weather rains down on most of the country, I hope Americans will save some space for this threat we face. It’s the same threat our grandparents did, except this time it’s at home. But this is what we do as a country. This is what separated us from the Soviets. This is what made us American. We stand up to bullies and their bullshit. We won’t be manipulated. We fight fascists, not allow them to stage-manage Congressional investigation theater. I refuse to believe that the American people will fall to performative idiocy. I choose to believe instead that most Americans will do the right thing. I hope more will do it soon.

Happy 4th of July!

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Speakers: Angie = Dr. Angie Rasmussen. Liz = Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi. Blockquoted sections are clips played from the hearing.

This thing was completely unhinged

Angie: Hi everybody, I’m Dr. Angie Rasmussen. Welcome back to the first show post-Canada Day and post the delightful MK Ultra congressional hearing that we all watched together on Tuesday. And apologies again — I did not realize that all of my StreamYard streaming software was going to cut the sound to my shared screen. And I didn’t realize that because I only have so many eyes and so many screens, and I didn’t see all of the comments that were telling me that there was no sound. So I apologize to all of those of you who were watching me talking to a silent screen and, like, yelling at it. Hopefully you got the picture. This thing was completely unhinged. And that’s why we’re going to be spending today’s show talking about how crazy it was with somebody who was actually there.

So today, joining us again, is Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi, who was brought in by the Democrats to this task force hearing to be a witness and actually speak up for evidence-based scientific stuff — which literally nobody else at this hearing did, because Jasmine Crockett, who was the ranking member of this task force, was out sick. So Liz was on her own. But I think you did a pretty good job, Liz. So do you want to tell everybody a little bit about what this experience was like?

Liz: Well, it was terrifying when I realized that there was no one there to have my back, because the whole premise for me being there was to help them, right? It was not pitched to me as “we’re going to throw you to the wolves.” That was totally unanticipated and not by design, and really just not intentional. It was just an unfortunate circumstance that at the last minute she had to cancel and there was no time to find someone else. The staffers felt terrible about it, I can tell you. And then, what would I do, just not go?

So I’m there, I’m in the anteroom — they have special rooms off the side of the hearing room, if you’re not familiar with the House buildings, and they have one side for the Democrats and one side for the Republicans. So I was in the private room for the Democrats, and I brought my husband with me because I thought, well, I’m going to do this by myself. And that was useful — he also got to take the pictures for me. But when I realized that Representative Crockett wasn’t coming, I just decided, okay, I need to be steely and I can’t take the bait. So I’m not going to try and argue with these people. There’s no changing their mind. It’s not like there’s anyone in that room that I can educate about vaccines or any of that. So I’m not going to even try. I’m just going to stick to my talking points. And I did that. So I feel like I did the right thing.

But let me back up. When I first arrived — if you’ve never gone to a hearing, these are open, anyone can go, you just have to go through metal detectors to get in — there was a line outside the hearing room, and the line was full of people who, let’s just say, are interested in conspiracy theories. And you could overhear them chatting with each other, and there was a woman there who was telling the story about how she knows that there are apps, cellphone apps, that you can use to choke people remotely. And the reason that she knows this is because she’s been a victim of it, and that’s why she’s here today, because we need to put a stop to this. So this is my first inkling, as I’m waiting, that this is the crowd that’s going to be behind me.

Angie: Can you imagine? I mean — you did work for NIH, so you may have been responsible for funding the projects that came up with, like, the force-choking apps. I’m like, really? I really kind of want an app like that. How do you get an app like that? Can I download it from the App Store?

What really happened in the Wuhan lab

Angie: I’m surprised that didn’t get brought up at the hearing, with all the discussion about social media and tech. Because — and here’s what struck me about this, and the reason — I’m not an MK Ultra expert. I know nothing about MK Ultra. And the only reason I know anything at all about MK Ultra is because MK Ultra is the same thing as other things I do know a lot about, and that is what really happened in the Wuhan lab. I can tell you, because I’ve done research on that topic. And then also the anti-vax stuff. So much of what was said at this hearing — and not about MK Ultra.

You know, I know that some of the things about MK Ultra did happen, and specifically what you were there to talk about are the things that happened as part of MK Ultra. So, experimentation on human subjects who either didn’t know or didn’t consent to participation — big no-no. Pretty bad that the CIA was doing that illegally, in order to learn how to mind-control people. Obviously I don’t think anybody in America is pro what they did during MK Ultra. But they burned all the evidence for it in 1973, when the outgoing CIA director left. There’s really no way to get to the bottom of this, and all the people who were affected are probably dead or extremely old if they’re not dead. And all the people who did this are probably dead. So there’s really no reason to have a hearing about it now, except for what they did bring up — and that was “what really happened in the Wuhan lab.”

I about died when Nancy Mace — and we’ve got some clips, so we’ll talk about all this stuff — but Nancy Mace asked you if you’d chatted with Tony Fauci about “did you make COVID or not.” I don’t really know what kind of professionalism they think is going on at the NIH, or how big they think the NIH is, because Tony Fauci — his office would be on an entirely different campus, actually, than the one you worked on, is that right, Liz?

Liz: Right. Well, because the NIH is so large, there is a main campus in Bethesda, and even many of the directors have more than one office. So Dr. Fauci would have had an office — what, during the pandemic, or are they talking about after the pandemic?

Angie: It’s like you were supposed to have watched him on TV and then been like, “Hey, Tony!” Which he only said, I believe, once, like in April of 2020, did he address pandemic origins at all. And then it was like, “Yeah, the best evidence that we have right now — I’m talking to some experts about it, my co-authors as well as other people who are legitimately coronavirus experts from all over the world — right now it looks like it’s natural.” Guess what, it still looks like it’s natural. And so that’s what really happened in the Wuhan lab. Spoiler alert: virology research that did not cause a pandemic is what happened in the Wuhan lab. And a little bit of work that was funded by an R01 subaward that was issued by NIAID, the institute that Tony Fauci was in charge of. But that doesn’t mean that Tony Fauci himself was personally going through the applications that were being reviewed by study sections or by council and being like, “Yes, that one, we’re going to do some gain of function. I think you need to stick a furin cleavage site into the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. I think you need to be especially careless with it, all over the place, and cause a pandemic.” Give me a break. This is totally ridiculous. But that’s the point of these hearings.

Liz: Yeah. And it became clear to me that they were so triggered by my presence that it was the early tell that the MK Ultra topic is not really why they’re doing this hearing. The reason they’re doing hearings like this is because their playbook is to sow distrust in government so they can justify dismantling it. And that’s the whole goal of this. So if we can say that — even though it’s fake — NIH caused the pandemic, vaccines kill people, and the government made you take those vaccines so you would get killed, then it gins up the fear and distrust amongst their base. And those MAGA people clap as they defund science in America, not knowing that it’s going to destroy the economy and put us at risk for all kinds of health problems in the future. Who cares about that?

Angie: Yeah, that’s right. It’s like, if you actually talk about what the evidence shows and what is true, most people in their right minds would not be supportive of what they are trying to do to the federal government. Most people would say, actually, we like having a federal government, because — oh gee — it funds all of these things that we never even really thought about that much, because we take them for granted, because the government has always funded them and taken care of them.

And to be very, very clear for everybody who’s watching: what Liz said is exactly correct.

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The crazy stuff they said

Angie: They are saying all this crazy stuff about MK Ultra, and to be very clear, here’s some of the crazy stuff they said. They said that Charles Manson was a CIA asset, and that the CIA basically enabled him to go on the murder spree that he and the Manson family went on, so that they could use him as their sort of mind-control muse and reverse-engineer being a cult leader so that they could mind-control people better. They said that James Earl Ray, the guy who shot Martin Luther King Jr., was MK Ultra’d, because he was a lousy thief and how else could he have made a shot like that. They said — and I’m still kind of not clear who got MK Ultra’d in this situation — but that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were sort of MK Ultra’d. I think what they’re saying is that Lee Harvey Oswald got MK Ultra’d, and Jack Ruby helped with that, although he may have been MK Ultra’d too, so he was kept under this MK Ultra psychiatrist’s nefarious care for the rest of his life, and guarded —

Liz: That’s right, so that he wouldn’t spill the beans.

Angie: And this is really a classic conspiracy theory technique of taking things that have always been associated with conspiracy theories — that you’re never really going to find out the whole truth about, like JFK’s assassination, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, although we do know who shot him — and saying, oh, well, the CIA did it, and that’s how all these things happen. And, oh, why didn’t we catch it in Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin’s case? It’s because they trimmed some hedge outside of the quote “flophouse” motel that he was staying at, to cover up — I guess the hedge would have had evidence that he was being MK Ultra’d.

They suggested — this was a congressperson who actually suggested this, Representative Burchett of Tennessee, I believe — suggested that Charlie Kirk’s killer was MK Ultra’d, as well as the shooter who attempted to assassinate President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Liz: Yeah.

Angie: So everybody’s still getting MK Ultra’d, so that’s why, again, we can’t trust the government, because they’re MK Ultra’ing assassins all over the place — sleeper assassins and Manchurian candidates that are going to come out here and, at the flip of a switch, they could shoot somebody or assassinate somebody.

Liz: That’s right. And the implication is they have to try and somehow take this real event that was horrific and connect it to the future and blame Democrats for it somehow, right? So the idea is, okay, because MK Ultra drugged people and tortured them in the past, which was a crime — well, we know this crime is still ongoing, and it’s why Charlie Kirk was killed and why somebody tried to assassinate President Trump. And it’s Biden’s fault, it’s Fauci’s fault, it’s the government’s fault, and you should hate your government. You should literally hate your federal government, and let us steal the money and defund it. That’s what’s going on here.

Angie: Precisely. And it’s not just steal the money and defund it, either. It’s build something else in its place. And, oh boy, are you guys not going to like what they’re building in its place. Because if you ever read 1984, that’s seriously what they’re building in its place. And they’re actually using a lot of the same techniques that were described in 1984: revisionist history, pretending that things happened that didn’t actually happen, pretending that topics are about something other than what they’re about.

What was really striking to me was people kept saying that you’re not an expert, because you’re not a crazy MK Ultra conspiracy theorist. But really, what was bad about MK Ultra — like I said, the thing that we know that was really bad about MK Ultra, which they talked about during this hearing — was the fact that they were not getting informed consent, and in some cases they were not getting consent at all, and people were not aware that they were being experimented on. And in some cases people did die — not from being killed by MK Ultra assassins, but from being given LSD without being aware of that, or being given huge doses of amphetamine and things like that. They were mostly drugging people, and they were drugging them without their knowledge or consent, which is a crime, and it’s incredibly unethical.

And so you’re an expert in that. You’re an expert literally because they are saying the government funded this, the government did all this — you’re literally an expert in how the government doesn’t do that. How the government at NIH did not do that. And correct me if I’m wrong, but your area of expertise scientifically is, in fact, psychology, correct?

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You’re an expert in how the government doesn’t do that

Liz: That’s right. I got my master’s and PhD degrees in social psychology. I’m very well aware of research on how to influence people, and there’s a lot of research in that domain. And not to mention, because I was at the NIH for 22 years, and I did research on my own before that, I know that all of the funding that we get now is governed by very stringent human-subjects-related law. And most of it stems from the MK Ultra crimes, as well as the Tuskegee syphilis study — which, if you don’t know about that, you should Google it and read it. It was just as horrific as MK Ultra, but truly despicable racism on top. Both of these things, among others, forced Congress to establish formal, federally mandated ethical oversight, and created what all scientists today know as the Belmont Report in 1979.

There are three fundamental principles that we all have to follow, no matter what kind of human subjects research you do — and that’s even if you’re not getting federal funding, because there’s no university in this country, and certainly not in Canada or any developed nation, that wants any scientist doing human subjects research who doesn’t adhere to this, with or without funding. You have to have respect for the people, and you have to treat them as autonomous agents with self-determination and not force things on them. That’s number one. Number two is this idea of beneficence, and that is basically, you want to avoid harming people and maximize the potential benefits of your research. So there’s always this cost-benefit in any human subject study — if there’s something too risky to do on people, you’re not going to be able to do it. And then the last one is justice. And this is something the GOP doesn’t like. You want to ensure fair distribution of the benefits of all research. So if it were up to them, Russell Vought can benefit from NIH science, but really, you know, people of color, minoritized populations, everyone who’s poor, you shouldn’t benefit —

Angie: Yeah, women, you shouldn’t benefit from science —

Liz: Just the wealthy and connected should benefit from science. And those are the three pillars of all human subjects research. And I came prepared with the talking points that I could, and they cut me off. They didn’t want to talk about those things, because they fundamentally don’t care about the law or fairness or justice or treating people with dignity and respect, as you could see in the way they spoke to me.

Angie: No, they treated you so disrespectfully, which I find also just appalling, because you are a lifetime career public servant, essentially. In any other administration, this is something that would automatically grant you respect, because by becoming a public servant, you’ve chosen to work for the American people, essentially — as opposed to working for, let’s say, a company, or in academia, where you could get a lot of academic glory like I do (I’m bathing in it), or you could go work in industry and make a ton of money. You could do a lot of things. But no, you chose to go into public service. And this used to actually be something that we, as a country, found to be honorable and valuable, and it would be something that certainly congresspeople would be praising you for and grateful for.

And I think it really just goes to show the degraded state of our political atmosphere right now, our political climate — and this is not just limited to the US, but it really goes to show how far apart we are politically between what I think most normal people think, and then what these people’s base think. They are catering to extremists. They are catering to people who really share their fascist vision with them, and of course their masters. And they are really just trying to get more people on board with that.

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The Eli Crane clip

Angie: I was going to share, really quick, this video of Eli Crane asking you about — the first question that he asked you, because none of the questions he asked you were in good faith. And none of this was going to be in good faith unless Representative Crockett had been there. And then the question she would have asked, she would have been in good faith. But I would have hoped, actually, that she would have spent less time asking you questions and more time trying to expose the other witnesses as the sort of tinfoil-hat-wearing guys that they were.

Now, I want to say that Dr. Kinzer, who is a policy fellow at Brown University, does seem to have a lot of expertise about MK Ultra. But where we differ is the fact that he was really, really speculative about things that he thinks are going on that he just doesn’t have any evidence for. And when he was asked if he had evidence for any of those things, he basically said that he would have that evidence if the files hadn’t been burned, or if they would declassify more stuff. And that’s just simply not how science works. You can’t say, “Well, I would have evidence if this secret mystery thing of evidence that I just made up exists — but I don’t know if it exists.” That’s not actually how you do science. If you hypothesize that something exists, then you actually have to go out and find it and demonstrate that that’s actually the case.

I wish Representative Crockett had been there — not just because you would have gotten the respect that you deserve, but also because I feel like the others would have been taken as seriously as they deserve to be taken. But let’s see what Eli Crane had to say to you. And guys, I’m looking at the comments now, so if there’s no sound — I think that was related to the screen sharing — but if there’s no sound, do let me know, I’m trying to work out all these technical things.

Crane: …any knowledge about any funding related to the Wuhan lab? So are you denying that the NIH—

Liz: I’m basically here to talk about what’s happening right now at the NIH, and how we really should be letting science be driven by scientists and not by politicians, because that’s how we fund cures and make health progress.

Crane: Well, with all due respect, ma’am, do you find it ironic that for years we were told to trust the science, and then in the aftermath we’ve all found out that most of what we were told during COVID was a complete lie and it wasn’t scientific at all?

Liz: The number one thing that I think we’re doing to destroy trust in American science right now is canceling clinical trials in the middle of those clinical trials. This does incredible harm to the patients who are receiving experimental treatments, and it really destroys the trust that we have. And how do we recruit patients for future trials if they know that their trials could just be simply canceled for political reasons?

Crane: I don’t think anybody up here would deny that there’s ever been anything good that’s come out of the NIH, and that you guys have done some good work. But you just brought up trust. You think the NIH has a trust problem based on how they handled COVID?

Liz: No, I do not. I think that the NIH is beloved by the American people, because we know about the advances in human health and cancer treatments and heart disease and diabetes and all of the health gains that the research has produced.

Crane: Well, I think you’re wrong, ma’am. I think that the public has a serious mistrust issue with the NIH.

Angie: Yeah, because this guy’s been lying about it every opportunity he gets.

Crane: …the origin of COVID —

Liz: I’m not here to testify about that. That’s not my area of science. I have no knowledge of that.

Angie: Oh yeah, here we go. Should have called me!

Crane: Do you believe that the NIH supported masking and social distancing when there was really no—

Liz: …The United States, including the Tuskegee syphilis study, forced Congress to establish formal federal rules—

Crane: I’m not asking you about that. Obviously this is supposed to be a hearing about MK Ultra, but when you gave your opening statement — and I don’t even know why you were called to this hearing, because you didn’t offer anything about MK Ultra — but since you are here and you’re going to defend NIH, I’m going to call you out on it. We were expecting you to come with some crazy conspiracy theories.

Angie: Honestly, that’s such a stupid question. What I’m more concerned about is what’s happening right now to destroy the biomedical research institution that has been the envy of the world. And right now, in Arizona? You know how much measles is happening right now? He should be concerned about that too. What about covering up harmful side effects of vaccines — “so it doesn’t matter that we’re speeding technology and science to China, let’s talk about masks.” Do you see now what I’m talking about?

Crane: …did you hear the applause in this room? That should tell you right now that you’re pretty tone-deaf to what the public thinks about how the NIH handled COVID and the cover-up — not only the funding of it, but the cover-up involved in the aftermath. Can you acknowledge that?

Liz: I’m sorry, that’s not my understanding.

Angie: Yeah. I mean, it’s true, it got to me too. I know there were like five people at least in there who were on team “thank you.”

[The chair:] I now recognize Representative Mace from South Carolina for five minutes.

Angie: Oh boy. So this is where I paused it, because I was bad about making individual clips.

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Nobody died in the numbers they are saying

Angie: They are responsible for any declines in trust — but on purpose. So the disinformation on Fox News has led to a decline in trust amongst mostly Republicans, let’s just be fair, and then they turn around and say, “because there’s this decline in trust, we need to eliminate the NIH.” Isn’t that rich?

Liz: Right. Well, that’s what they’re saying about the intelligence community right now too, and that was the purpose of this hearing. It wasn’t just — the NIH stuff is great, they want to take that out too. They definitely want to get a hold of the HHS budget, it’s a lot of money.

Angie: In this case, you know what happened the day after Tulsi Gabbard left, and dropped all of these Fauci files that supposedly got everybody talking again about how Tony Fauci started the pandemic with this piddly little sub-award. And I’m going to have a whole special episode talking about exactly what that research was, so that everybody understands that nothing that happened funded by the NIH — or as far as we know, otherwise funded by anybody, because there’s stuff we don’t know — but all of the evidence shows that what NIH funded could not, under any circumstances, have made SARS coronavirus 2, or, as Nancy Mace called it, “the COVID-19 virus.”

This idea that the vaccines had side effects like causing cancer or making people die in the millions — they’re making it seem like the vaccines killed more people than COVID itself. Nobody died in the numbers, or for the reasons, that they are saying that they died from vaccination. People have died here and there from vaccines. There are very rare complications that can happen from vaccination — extremely rare — as in, in Korea, for example. This was brought up by Retsef Levi, a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, who is completely unqualified to be there. And he brought it up as an example of how dangerous these vaccines are and how many people they’re killing.

Levi: Killed 22 people out of 40 million in the Republic of Korea. So that’s the death rate of these COVID-19 vaccines. 22 people out of 40 million.

Angie: That’s like one for every 2 million people died of a vaccine.

Liz: Right. And then that brings us back to the whole idea of what we do in human subjects research, right? And that these trials that test these vaccines adhere to that — the respect for persons, the beneficence, and the justice. So they need to show that the benefits far outweigh any risks. Because there’s no treatment — even taking aspirin has risks. Any medical treatment that you’re going to receive may have risks. The question is, what’s the probability of those risks, and how grave are those risks? And when you look at the other side of what the benefits were from the mRNA vaccines, the data is in: 87 percent effectiveness against getting infection, and 94 percent effectiveness against death.

Angie: I’m with you — if something’s going to give me a 94 percent chance of living, count me in. I couldn’t agree more, and I’m a huge vaccine enthusiast. But I don’t think that people recognize what the stakes are. And this is why I do this stupid show every day — like, I don’t even know how many people watch it, I’m not very good at it, I just kind of show up and do it — but I feel like people really need to understand what the stakes are here. Because this stuff is stupid and crazy and it’s a total clown show, and I can’t believe that I spent two hours of my life on Tuesday watching this shit. I can’t believe how much I now know about MK Ultra.

But the fact is, this is happening throughout the federal government. It’s happening in NIH, and in the intelligence community. What I was about to say is that Tulsi Gabbard’s replacement, the acting DNI, has basically gone in there and immediately started firing everybody, just like they started doing at the CDC when the government shutdown happened, and Russell Vought started ripping as many people as he could in the Department of Health and Human Services. And the reason for that is that they are manufacturing this fake distrust that allows the public to be okay with them cutting all of this stuff. And because this is policy stuff and it’s boring, most people don’t see what those impacts are going to be — because the impacts also don’t happen immediately.

So right now in the US, we’re dealing with more and more people increasingly realizing what the consequences are to things like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, where a lot of people lost their health insurance. And that’s not necessarily going to be something you notice right away if you don’t get sick immediately — who cares? But the second you get sick, even if it’s something really minor, certainly your checking account’s going to notice. It’s one of these mechanisms where they’re manipulating people’s emotions, they’re manipulating our normal standards of human behavior and the ways that we interact with each other and the expectations that we have for each other in a civil society, and they are basically turning us against the government so that we will not say anything or resist when the government takes all of our taxpayer-funded services away from us and uses it to prop up an authoritarian system. That, again — you guys, 1984 is not that far removed from this. This is just way stupider than 1984, but it’s the same terrifying Big Brother shit. It’s just really dumb on top of it, which to me adds insult to injury.

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Every accusation is a confession

Liz: That’s right. And even as — I’ve had people on Substack tell me that I’m not a real scientist, and I was called “ma’am,” and I was told that I’m not an expert in anything. The irony of all of this is that they had a hearing about mind control, and I’m a social psychologist by training, and what I saw was them deploying the most effective mind control process that we’ve had in American history in my lifetime. And it doesn’t involve LSD, it doesn’t involve electroshock. It uses Fox News, Newsmax, the Washington Examiner, Facebook, TikTok — and they have a coordinated conservative media company consulting group that’s very well funded, mind you, and they have been telling people that the government is corrupt, that scientists lie, that vaccines kill, and that the only people you can trust is them. This is a classic social psychological influence operation, and I know all about that. So it was the ultimate irony, and it tells you that every accusation that they launch is really a confession.

Angie: I’ve been saying that for so long, because it’s really true. And for me, it’s Jay Bhattacharya. I’ve been saying this about him since 2021, I think, where essentially — he likes to criticize me sometimes, and we’ve gone at it on Twitter over the years. I should one day make a scrapbook or something commemorating our long and storied relationship, where he tells me I don’t care about biosafety and I tell him he’s a laptop-toting poser who lies about everything. All those things are true — I do care about biosafety, though, quite a great deal.

But he said that he’s been silenced. He even got to the point where he’s suing the federal government over it. And then I guess the government lost in one of the most recent hearings in this unending, stupid First Amendment lawsuit, and he was tweeting about it, like, “I’ve never been so happy to lose in my life, because the government is no longer able to silence our brave contrarian dissenters” who just have some questions that they want to ask about lockdowns and “what kind of proof do we have,” because they always say that they’re into evidence-based medicine. And there is no evidence to be found in any of these dudes’ things, except for the evidence they sort of cherry-pick, or the evidence that they omit and conveniently don’t know about, or disagree with and therefore can be easily dismissed. Whatever. You know, if a paper gets retracted, or a paper won’t get accepted — this is one of my favorite ones — so I’m the co-editor-in-chief of a journal called Vaccine, right? And separately, within the federal government, some of these political types have influenced FDA scientists and forced them to withdraw a paper from my journal because it showed that COVID vaccines still work for everybody. Which is also an incredibly fucked-up thing when you think about the fact that the government’s top vaccine regulator forced FDA scientists to pull a paper from an external peer-reviewed journal because it showed that vaccines still work. It’s just the craziest times that we live in.

But everything that they do, everything they say — “we were silenced, nobody listened to us, nobody respected us.” Bullshit. Like, Jay Bhattacharya was on Tucker Carlson through the entire pandemic, at least once a week. He was on Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham, and now he’s on Steve Bannon’s War Room, and he’s talking at CPAC and he’s going to all of the big conservative conferences, and yet he’s giving interviews where journalists don’t even push back on him enough when he’s like, “Oh, well, I’m very apolitical. I’m telling you in the Washington Post that I’m the most apolitical guy who ever didn’t have an opinion on politics” — never mind that I was a fellow for years at the Hoover Institution, I come from basically the vipers’ nest of pandemic-denying contrarians at Stanford, I’m a health economist who’s not even really qualified to talk about any of the virology stuff, or for that matter any of the psychology stuff. He’s been saying all of this stuff for years, literally, as he continues to get richer, more high-profile — now he’s the NIH and the acting CDC director, and he doesn’t have any real power, because his whole job is to run around podcasting talking about how great the regime is. But he’s done pretty well for somebody who is supposedly cruelly silenced and ignored by all of his academic colleagues and had his career stolen from him. It seems like this guy just keeps falling forward.

Liz: Yeah. As I read it, the reason why he got so upset is because one of his YouTube videos got pulled, and he blamed the government for that. Well, last I checked, YouTube is owned by a company and it’s not owned by the government. At the time of the COVID pandemic, YouTube could do whatever it wanted on its platform, and that didn’t have anything to do with the government or Joe Biden.

Angie: And so you had a video pulled, so now he’s going to come in and cosplay as the director of NIH and pretend that he’s going to bring “gold standard science” — which is this ridiculous label, as if somehow before his arrival all the science that was done by NIH funding was not good enough and it was fake and it was woke, and there’s a reproducibility crisis, Liz.

Liz: Yes, yes. Because in some fields, sometimes things don’t get replicated, and therefore we should just cut the NIH budget.

Angie: Yeah, let’s just not do research anymore. It’s like there’s a replication crisis, reproducibility crisis. First of all, how did it become a crisis? Why is it even a crisis? This seems like — oh my god, are you telling me that somebody’s peer-reviewed paper wasn’t reproduced exactly, the data showed different results? Yeah — you’ve got to be in biology. Are you joking?

Liz: That’s right. And the even more bonkers thing is that if you know anything about science, and especially if you’re dealing with human subjects research, one of the main reasons why a particular study won’t replicate is because the samples that you had were not diverse enough. And they don’t want diverse samples, right? Because that’s woke. So we’re going to research white men, and then we’re going to make sure that we replicate everything on white men.

Angie: I just figured it out, Liz. Holy shit, I just had the best revelation. They can’t really do math. These men can’t really do math, so they just want to work on men so they don’t have so many variables to correct for, because they’re embarrassed that they can’t do math as well as other people who aren’t white men. I love it. This is so unbelievably stupid, I just can’t.

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Trans mice and Nancy Mace

Angie: Speaking of this, though — before we forget, let’s watch what Representative Nancy Mace had to say to you, because she’s also been on a real tear with the NIH lately. Once again she’s complaining about “trans mice,” and it’s still not clear to me if she means transgenic mice, which she might, or if she means studies that have been done where they’ve treated mice with hormones and things. And, you know, how do people think that drugs and things are tested? Guess what — I’m cisgendered and I take hormones every day, and I have since I was 16 years old, because I don’t want to get unintentionally preg out. There’s a lot of reasons that you can take hormones besides gender-affirming care, and they do a lot of experiments on hormones because they’re biologically important. So I’m not sure which of those Nancy Mace meant, but she’s the research police now, making sure that all of the stuff is not wasting any taxpayer money looking at mice or whatever.

Liz: Hopefully she’ll never need HRT.

Angie: Hopefully. I’m not worried about Nancy Mace at this point in her life having a gender identity crisis, or deciding to transition to another gender, but she’ll never know when she might need some extra hormones. And what I find so funny about all of this stuff is that all of these guys who hate trans people and hate gender-affirming care all want to take testosterone and all these hormones to make them extra manly. It’s really stupid. Anyways, let’s take a look at Nancy Mace demonstrating one of my favorite Orwellian tactics right here, and that is the tactic of: it doesn’t matter if any of this is true, just repeat it and act really confident about it. The looks that she was giving you — I feel like she must practice these in a mirror. She has to. I know that when she tried those glasses on, she was like, “Fauci. Fauci, did you ask Fauci about the COVID-19 virus?” Anyways, let’s take a look and watch her doing it herself.

Mace: Thank you so much. Dr. Ginexi, you work with the NIH, correct?

Liz: No, I am no longer affiliated with the NIH.

Mace: When did you leave the NIH?

Liz: April of last year.

Mace: Did you ever speak with Anthony Fauci or any of your NIH colleagues when you were there about the NIH’s role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the development of the COVID-19 virus?

Liz: No.

Mace: Do you believe that the NIH or Dr. Fauci lied to the American people about COVID?

Liz: No.

Mace: Are you familiar with Dr. Fauci’s statements to Congress about COVID?

Liz: Yeah.

Mace: You worked at the NIH and you didn’t watch any of Dr. Fauci…? Do you think that the COVID shots harm American citizens?

Liz: No, I do not.

Mace: Do you think that the COVID shots cause turbo cancers?

Liz: No.

Mace: Do you know if the NIH tracks COVID shot injuries, like cancers or anything?

Liz: I am not aware of any harmful tracking, and this is not my area of expertise.

Mace: What is your area of expertise?

Liz: I’m a research psychologist, and I did not work at NIA.

Mace: And you’re here for what reason?

Liz: I am here to testify about what is happening to the NIH right now.

Mace: You’re not here to testify about MK Ultra?

Liz: I am not an MK Ultra expert.

Mace: Why did the Dems send you here if you’re not an MK Ultra expert?

Liz: But I am an expert in human subjects protection, protection of human subjects research. But you don’t want to hear about that, right?

Mace: Yeah, but you don’t know anything about MK Ultra, which is the—

Liz: I could talk about unethical experiments, if you want me to.

Angie: She didn’t get that far. She wanted to know if you’re going to put your tinfoil hat on or not. I mean, it’s just so stupid. It’s all so performative, and I just want people to understand what a waste of their money this is.

Liz: That’s right. Nothing gets accomplished from this, other than allowing people like Nancy Mace to make her “I got you, Liz Ginexi” face. And does she understand that there were a lot of — at least before they DOGE’d everybody, we had like 20,000 employees at the NIH? This idea that somehow I would just happen to run into Tony Fauci and have a conversation about whether he inadvertently caused the pandemic —

Angie: “And then I saw you on TV the other day, Tony, talking with the President, Debbie Birx and Jerome Adams and all the people, Brett Giroir, like all the people who were there during the pandemic — the squad saw you on TV, you know, putting your face in your hands when the President suggested that we should just get some sunlight in there and it’s like a cleaning or whatever — wondering if any of this was your fault. Like, did you help one of your awardees to go out there and do this?” Because a man who spent 40 years researching viruses and trying to cure them would intentionally try and unleash a bioweapon. Like, what the hell?

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The idea that a federal grant is a cash prize

Angie: But he gets so much money for it, and so do we all, Liz. Did you know that the biodefense initiative that came out is just Tony Fauci making it rain all over us for doing reckless gain-of-function virology research? This is the thing that drives me nuts — it’s the idea that a federal grant is like a cash prize. Like, “I just submitted the best grant proposal of my life, so Tony Fauci’s gonna make it rain on me, and I’m gonna be driving a sports car and I’m gonna go out and buy all the purses that I’ve ever wanted.” I bet that’s how Debbie Birx got her Hermès scarf collection. It’s just so stupid — the idea that you get personally wealthy because you get a grant, or that Tony Fauci has any kind of personal financial interest in funding things that are not scientifically important. You could probably speak to what the actual rules are in terms of conflict of interest, but my understanding is that NIH and government rules in general, prior to this administration, were actually quite strict about you making a personal profit or having a business venture that was based on something that you were personally responsible for funding.

Liz: That’s right. Every year, I had to — and all my colleagues did — we had to sign an official government form where I had to list all of my income sources, my husband’s income sources, and I had to certify that I didn’t own any pharmaceutical stocks or anything that I could benefit from — even though I had a program scientist role that didn’t do anything with pharmaceuticals. So that’s how strict it is. And you can be prosecuted if you fill out these forms wrong, and you have to do it every single year to recertify that you have no financial conflicts.

Angie: That’s really telling, I think, Liz, because that’s one thing that I’ve noticed about all of these accusations. So my colleague, Vincent Munster, and one of his colleagues at Rocky Mountain Labs — which is an NIH facility — were arrested and accused of “smuggling” mpox virus, even though they were actually bringing in samples that it is completely legal to bring in. My colleague and friend Vincent was a little bit of a dick to the customs guy, and that seems to me like it was his biggest crime — because he actually didn’t commit the crime of bringing in a select agent without properly declaring it, or he would have been charged with that. And it’s very noticeable that despite all of these accusations about Tony Fauci having committed all of these crimes, Tony Fauci hasn’t been charged with anything — not just because of the pardon; he wasn’t charged with anything before he had that pardon.

Liz: That’s right.

Angie: And like you said, with these conflict-of-interest things — nobody pays attention to this, because, again, this is super boring. The public does not generally care if there’s somebody corrupt at NIH, if they get caught and they get in trouble. That’s not a news story. That’s the system working as it’s supposed to, keeping corrupt people out of NIH. But don’t you think the first thing they would have done would be to look through something like the conflict-of-interest disclosures — which is actually an accusation that they’re constantly making against him — and find proof of that, because it would be pretty easy to prove if you were actually doing it? And then, like you said, they could instantly charge him with it right then and there. I think that Biden would not have issued him a pardon if he’d actually committed a crime before any of this. And oh boy, was Rand Paul at least looking for it. So I think people should pay attention to all of these people saying nonstop — like Nancy Mace just did to you there — that Fauci committed crimes and all of this stuff. Why haven’t they charged him? Why didn’t they charge him before he had a pardon? Why haven’t they charged other people who don’t have pardons?

Liz: Yeah. And this is called — for the wonky people out there — OGE Form 450, okay, and it’s part of 5 CFR Part 2634. I’m looking at it right now — this is the U.S. Government Office of Ethics rules — and we have to certify — and I have, I’m looking at a copy of one that I saved — you have to certify all of your outside positions, money you get from all different sources, and it goes through an ethics review. And if there’s anything wonky on there, you have to divest from either the financial thing, or you have to give up doing work on whatever the conflict is. So it’s resolved before you can even continue working, right? And Dr. Fauci and all of the directors are subject to the same stringent rules as I was. So the idea that they would have something against him — they would’ve charged him by now. It’s clear that he did nothing wrong.

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The more boring person is the one to pay attention to

Angie: Yeah. It makes no sense at all to continue saying this, except for when you think about what Nancy Mace just did to you. She knows that you don’t know about any of this stuff, and that you’re not going to answer questions about it. That’s not the point of her asking you, though. The point of her asking you is to ask you in such a way that it seems like it’s true, and it seems like you’re being deceptive or dishonest by not answering those questions. And what people are going to take home from that, if they watch it or if they make a clip of it later — if you know who Nancy Mace is, then you know she’s the congressperson who’s completely ridiculous and a moron. But if somebody doesn’t know — I mean, there are a lot of people out there who don’t know who the president is, and as hard as that is to believe, there are literally people who, if they are asked that on a test, will not get it right without looking it up.

There are a lot of people who pay varying amounts of attention to all of this stuff. So if you haven’t been paying any attention, and then you see Nancy Mace asking you, with this look on her face like “Liz is lying,” basically acting like she’s some sort of judge and you’re a defendant — and somebody doesn’t have all the context — then it’s like you’re saying something that is boring and correct and relevant to the topic at hand, but because it’s not a wild insane conspiracy theory, the person who is watching, who doesn’t know that that wild insane conspiracy theory is a wild insane conspiracy theory, just sees you being evasive to a sitting U.S. congressperson who is saying something that is, again, wild, insane, and a conspiracy theory. But if you don’t have the background to know about that, you might not see it that way.

And I think that’s what’s so concerning about all of these things. They’re not created for any reason except to create more propaganda like this. And that’s why I am really glad, Liz, that you went to this hearing, because I do think that we don’t serve our interests by not showing up to these things, even though they’re rigged against us, and even though the purpose is to reshape how people think. It is to do MK Ultra stuff, and it does work — because I don’t know about Charles Manson, but you know who did this real well? Joseph Stalin did this real well. And, oh, you know who 1984‘s Big Brother was based on? Yeah, Joseph Stalin. So people really need to pay attention to the fact that when you see something like this out of context, and you’re like, “what is going on here,” maybe reflect on the fact that the person who is being targeted in this video, the more boring person, is actually the one who you should be paying attention to. That was certainly true in this hearing.

Liz: Yeah. And the comments I saw on the TikTok video are, “she didn’t answer the questions, that’s fishy, she must be corrupt,” right? Whereas Nancy Mace — who lost her primary, by the way, so she’s going to go away and probably just make a lot of money as a lobbyist — she has talking points. She did not come up with those things to say by her own genius. She’s handed talking points by the Republican Party. She knows what she’s supposed to say, and she reads from that script. She’s not a smart person. If the tables were turned and I could ask her a bunch of questions — let’s say even about MK Ultra, which she was supposed to come there for — she wouldn’t be able to answer them. She would not be able to answer an interrogation unless she was given talking points. And that’s the difference between her and me. I was there on a limb by myself with no support from anybody, and I was able to confidently and truthfully say “no” to her questions. So I’m the one with integrity, not her.

Angie: Yeah. And I think that’s why it’s really important to stand up for science, even when it’s personally difficult to do so, like it must have been for you yesterday. I think that people really need to see in practice that being a scientist and standing up for science is not just being like, “yeah, I like science, it’s cool and it’s fun and innovative and yay for the economy.” Science is actually a practice of figuring out the answer to a problem, filling a knowledge gap, and the way that you do that is by providing evidence. And that’s what you did. You demonstrated, “I’m not going to answer questions that I don’t know the answer to,” because — isn’t this supposed to be an investigation where you’re finding the answer to your questions? That’s a mark of expertise.

And I’ve been saying this since 2020, because people during the pandemic also used to ask me a lot, “how do I know if an expert’s reliable?” Now I’m like, good luck to you. I’m reliable — I think I sometimes make mistakes, but I am not trying to steer you in the wrong direction, so you can come to me — but now you just have to use your best judgment. But I used to tell people, and I still do tell people this, that to me, one of the signs that I know somebody’s an expert in something is when they admit that they’re not an expert in something else that they aren’t actually an expert in. I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m not an expert in MK Ultra, and I just know a little bit about it because it is the same thing, more or less, as other things that I am an expert in — both in terms of the conspiracy theories and the underlying science. And what I thought was most impressive about you, Liz, was that you did say, “I’m not an expert in MK Ultra, I don’t know why the Dems brought me here” — because they didn’t confess that to me — “but they asked me to come here to talk about this particular MK Ultra-related issue that I am a technical subject matter expert in.” And that answer wasn’t good enough for Nancy Mace, and that goes to show you exactly what kind of good faith they’re operating in, which is none at all. But it also shows me that there was one person in that room who was an expert on anything, and that was you, and not any of those other people — unless you count expertise on essentially making up wild stories. They were expert booksellers, maybe.

Liz: Yeah, they really want more declassified documents. One of them even said so, “I can write my next book.”

Angie: That’s right, my career depends on it. He was mad that not enough has been declassified so that he can get another advance.

Liz: That’s right. And he’s perfectly happy with the deconstruction and dismantling of the biomedical research enterprise, as long as he gets declassified material to write a book.

Angie: That’s what I’ve noticed has been most disappointing to me about many of our colleagues. They will be okay with a lot of things, with everything that’s going on, as long as there’s some kind of guarantee that they will come out okay on the other side. And what I really want everybody to understand is that nobody gets out of this alive. If this goes through, if we become like 1984 Big Brother America, you’re not getting your book deal, you’re not getting anything. We’re all going to be the same, and not in a good place. None of us are going to get the things that we want in our lives. So you can’t appease this. You can’t make deals with it. You can’t make a carve-out for yourself in this. And I really hope that more people start realizing that.

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Not everybody has to scream about fascism for 30 minutes every day like I do

Angie: Because I think the only way that we’re going to have a critical mass, a critical resistance that’s actually going to make an impact, is if more people do stuff like what you did yesterday, Liz — contribute in the way that they can, in the way that they are asked to. Not everybody has to contribute the same way. Not everybody has to scream about fascism for 30 minutes every day like I do. It’s one thing that I know I can do. Not everybody’s going to get asked to go testify before Congress at an insane MK Ultra hearing that they are bizarrely, uniquely qualified to testify for even though they’re not an insane MK Ultra conspiracy theorist. And when they’re asked to do that, I’m so grateful for people like you, Liz, who do that, for people who are doing the work to get out the word — that you have, by the way, another 11 days to submit a comment to the Office of Management and Budget about the proposed rule changes that are going to put over a trillion dollars’ worth of taxpayer money in these people’s hands, and we’ll never be able to get it back.

Doing things like that — leaving a comment, going and testifying before the House if you’re asked, just telling everybody about it when you get the opportunity, sharing information like that with people — there’s so many different ways that we can contribute, but I just really hope that more and more people do. Because, you know, I just kept thinking, Liz, while I was watching this thing, that as soon as they realized that they weren’t going to get that much good footage out of you — other than what Crane did, basically, and what Mace did — they pretty much weren’t going to talk to you, because they were going to get a lot more mileage out of the guys who are going to say, “well, Charlie Kirk was probably taken out by an MK Ultra Manchurian candidate sleeper assassin.” It’s just totally wild. They’re not going to get you to talk. So I’m just really, really grateful for you doing something like that, because it’s not going to be fun to do, but it’s so important that you do it. Because by seeing you do it, I feel like somebody else might be able to do something that they thought was going to be really hard too, but is going to be really necessary. So I’m grateful for you, Liz. Thank you so much.

Liz: And I just want to say one last thing before I go, for anyone who watched Eli Crane’s little video on TikTok or Instagram. He’s a liar. He is a former Navy SEAL. The idea that he is against vaccines is baloney. He has had all of his vaccines. So you’re being lied to by this man. I just want to point that out. I didn’t lie, but he lies.

Angie: Yeah. And I think that’s also a good point — every single one of those congresspeople lied, but you’re very right about that, Liz. He was saying all this stuff about vaccine injuries that’s completely untrue, when in reality that guy’s probably had more vaccines than most Americans. He’s probably had almost as many vaccines as I have, and I’ve been vaccinated for like almost everything. I bet he had, like, ACAM2000, which is the last generation of the smallpox vaccine.

Liz: That’s right. SEALs get everything.

Angie: Yeah, supposed to get everything. I mean, apart from the fact that it’s terrifying that that man was a Navy SEAL and has skills that I shudder to think about really dumb people having — very competent, lethal skills.

Liz: Well, that’s the thing — I don’t think he’s dumb, and that’s why I say he’s a liar. What he’s doing is going along with it, and in some ways that’s more despicable to me.

Angie: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think you can both be dumb and go along with it. I think that’s definitely the situation in Representative Mace’s case, as well as Representative Boebert, who didn’t really go after you, but — right, and Luna — they both said a number of problematic and very, very stupid things at this. And you’re right, I actually have no idea whether they themselves are stupid or not. They pretend to be stupid, and I’m sure that some of them actually are, and I’m sure that some of them are very smart and just simply are morally challenged. But you’re right — you’re the only person in that room who had any integrity. And it’s just really unfortunate to see that the legislative branch, essentially the last thing standing for the American people, is really being degraded this way. I’m very worried about the whole state of our democracy if there’s not a change in the midterm elections.

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Happy Fourth of July!

Liz: Right.

Angie: Wow, what a cheerful note to end on. I’m so glad, though, Liz, that you came on, and I think we should do this more regularly.

For a little piece of housekeeping: Jessica and I had a chat, and with our travel schedules and our upcoming stuff, we’ve decided to put our Friday show on hiatus for the foreseeable future — just because it’s been getting really difficult to plan a regular show that happens every Friday afternoon when, let’s face it, most people actually want to go out and do something besides watch Substack lives about public health and science, these days especially. So we’re not going to do that anymore. But I’m going to be back here every day doing my ranting show on days when I feel up to it, and we’ll have special one-off shows, and Jessica and I will be doing “here and there taking shots” shows opportunistically, when we both have time for it and we think there’s something important to discuss.

So thanks for joining us today. I think I am going to be off tomorrow, since I’m an American who lives in Canada, so that means this week I get multiple holidays — and I think it’s Friday tomorrow, so I’m just going to go ahead and probably spend the day working on my AI model to defeat the fascists. But I might take a break and eat some hot dogs or something. And then I’ll be gone until Wednesday of next week, because my husband and I are going on a little fishing trip. We do live in Canada, so I’m going to be offline for that. But have a great long weekend, and happy Fourth of July, everybody. Don’t go to any Trump propaganda events, but do spend the Fourth of July reflecting on how much you love old America and our Constitution, with your family and the people that you love. Fourth of July is always one of my favorites, and just because we live in fascism doesn’t mean that we should give up the things that we celebrate about our country with each other. So be safe and have a good time. And thank you again, Liz, for coming back — it’s always such a wonderful time to talk with you, even though it’s never wonderful what we’re actually talking about. And great job yesterday. You’re a champion and a true hero for scientists. It was unreal.

We’ll see everybody. Happy Fourth.

Related from Rasmussen Retorts

• The hearing itself: MKULTRA Hearing

• On the “Fauci funded the pandemic” claim and gain-of-function: I DGOF: Explaining Gain-of-Function Research

• On the lab-leak claim: Five Reasons Why It Still Wasn’t a Lab Leak

• On the Munster mpox arrest: Virology Research Is Not a Crime

Links from this episode

• I Went to Congress to Testify in an MK-Ultra Hearing (Elizabeth Ginexi)

• MK Ultra congressional hearing — prior coverage (Rasmussen Retorts)

• Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, Nature Medicine (2020) — the “it looks like it’s natural” evidence

• The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee — CDC

• Read the Belmont Report (1979) — HHS OHRP

• FDA blocked publication of studies confirming COVID and shingles vaccine safety (the Vaccine journal withdrawal) — reported first by Lizzy Lawrence at STAT, then by Christina Jewett at the New York Times; see also CNBC’s writeup

• DOJ charges NIH scientists with “smuggling” monkeypox — U.S. Attorney, E.D. Michigan

• OGE Form 450 / 5 CFR Part 2634, Subpart I — Confidential Financial Disclosure

• OMB proposed rule comment docket (comments close ~July 13, 2026)Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Get more from Dr. Angela Rasmussen in the Substack app

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Hi there everybody, good morning. I did not make theme music for this delightful event. So we are about fifteen minutes out and I’ve got the task force hearing streaming video ready to go as soon as it comes online.

I’ve spoken with my colleague who is going to be a witness for the Democrats. That is Dr. , who is a former NIH program official, senior program official. She worked at NIH for twenty-two years managing a very large research portfolio of many different kinds of grants, as well as authoring different types of funding programs.

At NIH back in the day — this is going out of style now — the individual institutes and centers that make up the NIH would have their program officials get together and identify knowledge gaps that were important to fill, important scientific questions that needed to be answered, and they would offer funding opportunities to fill in some of those knowledge gaps. So that’s what Liz did for twenty-two years at NIH, and she did a lot of really impactful research.

Liz and I have had conversations about some of the projects that she had been working on when this whole nightmare started and she ended up leaving NIH. And it really breaks my heart as a scientist to think about all of the research that we’ve lost because of talented people at NIH like Liz. But thank goodness for her expertise, because she’s now available — now that she’s no longer at NIH — to still come and provide congressional testimony. And wow, what does a senior NIH program official have to do with mind control and MKUltra?

It looks like the streaming window has gone live. Sorry, I have a new monitor set up and a new desk, so I’m still trying to kind of make everything work. Liz is going to be talking about, I think, human subjects protection, because that’s what this MKUltra stuff is all about.

What even is MKUltra?

I thought before the hearing started I’d pop in and just chat with everybody a little bit about what MKUltra even is. What is this mind control that the CIA was getting up to? And why is Anna Paulina Luna, who is the head of this task force on the House Oversight Committee, involved in all of this?

Anna Paulina Luna is a very hardcore MAGA-aligned Republican congresswoman from Florida who is a former model and was in the Air Force. She’s taken a lot of pictures of herself looking hot in tactical gear. Now she’s a congressperson, and she’s relatively unhinged. She hangs around with the likes of Lauren Boebert, who will also be at this hearing today.

So this hearing is about MKUltra — mind control. But it wasn’t really mind control. The CIA was experimenting with ways to do mind control, but we don’t really know how successful they were, and probably not very. Mostly it was drugging people.

Back in the early nineteen fifties, the Cold War was at its height and we were doing everything we could in the US to make sure we got one up on the Soviet Union. The CIA was worried that the Soviet Union was getting ahead of us in terms of their mind control and interrogation tactics. So they started something called Project Bluebird, and then they had something called Project Artichoke — that was around nineteen fifty-one, I think — which was a way to trick an adversary into thinking that they were going into a medical clinic and getting some kind of medical treatment when actually they’d be getting some kind of drugs. And then this became MKUltra.

It doesn’t seem like they actually spent a lot of time trying to trick people into that sort of fake medical situation. The guy who ran MKUltra was Sidney Gottlieb, and he sounds like he was a pretty terrible guy, given that MKUltra did a bunch of experiments on people who didn’t realize they were being experimented on. That’s a big no-no in terms of research ethics. You don’t want to ever do that. And in this case, they were doing it on people who were in psychiatric hospitals, people who’d been involuntarily committed, and on prisoners. Big no-no. Not supposed to do that with human research participants or human subjects, as they were called back in the day.

It’s important to note that Project Artichoke and MKUltra were not trying to do this to American citizens. They were trying to do this to foreign enemies — like, to trick Soviet people into confessing all of the communist secrets. That was the point of MKUltra.

Now, in the early nineteen seventies, the CIA director at the time, Richard Helms, ordered that all of the primary research records for MKUltra be destroyed on his way out of office. They were incinerated. Many of the documents that exist now are financial records or administrative records — they don’t really have anything to do with the actual research that was done in MKUltra. So to a degree, we will never know what happened in MKUltra unless some sort of secret trove of documents is uncovered. But from what I can tell, there is no such secret trove, because it was well understood that Helms literally burned into ashes all of the records. So there probably won’t be very much accountability. But that’s not actually the point of this hearing.

Why is Anna Paulina Luna running this hearing?

Anna Paulina Luna loves these types of conspiracy theories, because ultimately what they do is point a finger back at the government and say: look at how bad the old democratic way of doing things was. Don’t you like things better now that we live in essentially an autocracy? That’s the point of this hearing. It’s not to get accountability for unethical human experimentation that was done as part of the MKUltra project. It’s something that’s going to be used to further the dismantling of the government — to do to the intelligence community what they are doing elsewhere in the government to science and public health.

And that’s where I come in. Because it turns out this does have to do with viruses. Anna Paulina Luna’s source for all of this information that she’s supposedly uncovered with her investigation is Tulsi Gabbard, who is a known Russian asset. Anna Paulina Luna herself is awfully friendly with a lot of people who are involved in the Russian government and who are friends with Vladimir Putin. Her activities include things like opposing any support and aid to Ukraine, essentially taking pro-Russian positions on most things, and certainly helping Tulsi Gabbard spread her Russian propaganda about biolabs in Ukraine.

So that is why Anna Paulina Luna is having this hearing — to get some of these ideas more out into the mainstream. And this is why I’m involved, because they are going to make it about vaccines. This is five-G-microchips kind of stuff that we’re talking about here.

Just because there was this one line in a Project Artichoke document about trying to trick somebody into taking drugs for interrogation by giving them a fake vaccine — an idea that was dismissed by Sidney Gottlieb because he thought MKUltra should be more covert — it’s now become a popular thing with the anti-vaxxers. Because of this one reference, there’s now this whole idea that fake vaccines were used for mind control.

And just to show that the Venn diagram of all of these crazy people is becoming a perfect circle, there’s a bunch of lab leak stuff involved in this too. Tulsi Gabbard, in addition to releasing JFK and MKUltra information which was supposedly taken out of her office by the CIA — her office was raided by the CIA and all these secret documents were removed, and then Anna Paulina Luna got them back — it’s so much dumb drama. These documents don’t say anything.

Ultimately, it comes down to: Fauci did the pandemic. So let’s get the NIH. Let’s get our national security apparatus. Let’s get our intelligence program. Let’s get the whole U.S. government. And that’s why I am here today. It’s anti-vax. It’s lab leak. I already know about all this stuff, so might as well learn about MKUltra.

There’s just not that much to learn about MKUltra. It was mostly a bunch of CIA people who read too much science fiction and decided they were going to start trying to do some of those things themselves, and probably were not very successful for the most part. They did a lot of unethical things in the process.

The Republicans have brought two witnesses. One of them is a historian — Stephen Kinzer, who wrote a book called Poisoner in Chief about Sidney Gottlieb. No idea really what he’s going to talk about — I’m new to this area. The other guy, Tom O’Neill, is a journalist who has written a book called Chaos about how Charles Manson was a CIA asset and MKUltra was kind of Manchurian candidating him or something. So these people are certified tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists.

And really, it all comes back to the same thing — here’s a convenient conspiracy that’s kind of an exciting story. Who doesn’t want to hear about, oh my God, the government was doing all this shady stuff to do mind control? I bet it was the Democrats who did it. I bet it was Joe Biden. He was somehow involved. You know, it comes back to this every single time. The old way of doing things, aka American democracy, was not a good way of doing things anymore. And we need to move to this more dictatorial format of government, which I personally disagree with strongly.

I really, really am upset by the fact that this whole thing — the collapse of American democracy, the death of my country, the subversion of normal processes — we are literally having a congressional hearing funded by our tax dollars about insane conspiracy theories. I’m resentful that these people are being such clowns about it.

All of this stuff is going to be a complete and total circus today. It’s going to be a clown show. Liz has already reported that there are some interesting people waiting to get into the hearing. I expect there to be a lively audience and probably some dramatic moments. So I’m glad that we’re watching along.

But it makes me really sad because at the end of the day, we can laugh at how stupid it is, and it’s going to be so, so, so unbelievably stupid. But that stupidity is what’s going to be the end of America as we know it. And I think it’s really important for people to understand that their tax dollars are paying for this. This is what our elected leaders are doing. Especially since there is a midterm election coming up in a few months, I really think that Americans need to see how their elected officials are representing them — how they are meeting this moment of tremendous crisis for our country — and they’re meeting it by having congressional oversight hearings about mind control and giving people LSD and experimenting on people.

There’s no secret that we can uncover. All the people who were involved in Project MKUltra are dead. They are not currently part of the dark web or whatever that’s running the government, the Shadow State, the deep state. The deep state these days seems to me like it is the Russian government more than anything else. And the fascists are pretty open about it. Anna Paulina Luna is one of those people.

Lauren Boebert is also on this. She tweeted back in April that Anna Paulina Luna was like, we’re going to have an MKUltra hearing, and Boebert was like, I’ve been waiting my whole time in Congress for this. This is just crazy to think that the people of Lauren Boebert’s district in Colorado elected somebody who has been waiting her entire congressional career for the opportunity to put on a show hearing where you’re basically going to codify this MKUltra conspiracy theory bullshit.

The strategy here is just to repeat these ridiculous conspiracy theories over and over and over again until they become true for most people. That’s what happened with the lab leak. As somebody who has co-authored multiple papers of original research showing that there was no lab leak, or at least that the evidence we have is inconsistent with a lab leak — the pandemic did not start because of a lab leak, it did not start because of Tony Fauci, it did not start because of virology research, it did not start because of dangerous gain-of-function research — but every time I open Twitter, I see Rand Paul and a zillion other Republicans all saying that it is a known fact that it is a lab leak, the debate is over. And they just say this over and over again.

[Hearing begins.]

So in other words, those documents are meaningless. Super organized. These dudes look exactly like I thought they were going to. Not sure if this guy’s crazy or not. He’s an academic. Could mean he’s crazy. Not that secret, evidently. Right, because most of it got burned. I don’t think anybody’s disputing that that’s bad. Sherlock Holmes in it, huh? Yeah, so they drugged him with LSD and threw him out a window. That’s how the story goes. I would agree with that.

Oh my god, I’m so sorry about the audio

Okay guys, I don’t know what’s going on with my sound. I’m gonna try to figure this out right now. I’m just closing the stream and I’m gonna restart it. Last time I did this there was an echo, so I wore my AirPods this time and I’m a little worried that perhaps that is causing the issue. So I’m going to take them out and we’ll just have to live with an echo if there’s going to be one.

The other issue is being able to share the system audio. And that’s what I’m doing right now.

Oh my god, I’m so sorry that everybody’s missing this because this is so incredibly fucking dumb. I’m gonna get this fixed before Lauren Boebert comes on. He’s talking about a poisoning MKUltra experiment in France that involved poisoned bread.

Oh, this is so annoying. I don’t know why it’s not working. Sorry, guys. So irritating. You guys, I’m just truly so astonished at how stupid this thing is. And I can’t believe that we’re missing it. I’ve almost got it back. I’m just completely reopening everything and we’re going to open this up on YouTube and then I’m going to move it back. We’re going to try this again.

Back online — and I missed the best parts

Hi, everybody. Sorry about this.

MACE:

Do you see now what I’m talking about when you say that the NIH doesn’t have integrity problems and trust issues? Did you hear the applause in this room? That should tell you right now that you’re pretty tone deaf to what the public thinks about how the NIH handled COVID and the cover-up — not only the funding of it, but the cover-up involved in the aftermath. Do you acknowledge that?

It’s a lie. I’m sorry. That’s not my understanding. That’s right, Liz.

Oh, he doesn’t like people clapping for her. Thank you.

Okay. I think I fixed everything. So sorry about all those technical issues. What you just missed was him basically talking about how Charles Manson was a CIA asset. And there’s Liz. She’s great.

[Reading viewer comments:] Going to be the first [gaveling] on record. I thought nobody was getting gaveled out.

It’s mind control bioweapons. If there was such a decision, I don’t think it’s known that he was murdered. Here we go. And they invented Lyme disease. There were a lot of Nazi scientists who came over in Operation Paperclip.

Boebert questions Kinzer on communist brainwashing

BOEBERT:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to two of our witnesses who are here to actually talk on our subject here today. Mr. Kinzer, in your book, Poisoner in Chief, you describe how Project MKUltra was authorized by CIA director Allen Dulles in April of nineteen fifty-three — an umbrella program for research into the covert use of biological and chemical materials for mind control and interrogation. What specific geopolitical and intelligence concerns, particularly regarding alleged Soviet and Chinese “brainwashing” of Korean War prisoners, drove this authorization? And how did Sidney Gottlieb’s unique background and personality and worldview shape the program’s direction and methods and ethical challenges?

That’s because Sidney Gottlieb is Jewish.

KINZER:

Let me start by answering your second question about Gottlieb. He was a very different person from all of the other senior CIA officers of that era. Most of them came from silver-spoon backgrounds. They went to the same prep schools and the same Ivy League colleges and belonged to the same yacht clubs and worked for the same law firms and international banks. Sidney Gottlieb was the son of Orthodox Jewish refugees from Central Europe. He had a limp. He had a stutter. He went to Hebrew school. He was so different from all of the other officers.

Upon reflection, I think this may not have been an accident. I think that people at the CIA understood that whoever had this job was going to be doing some awful, terrible things that would be very bloody, that they might become known, and it might be necessary to blame it all on somebody. And they didn’t want to have to blame it all on one of their own. So Gottlieb actually became the person on whom everything was blamed. In fact, when he testified in secret here in Congress in the nineteen seventies, he complained that there were documents on which various signatures had been redacted, but his alone had remained — so is again a way of diverting attention away from the institutional responsibility of the CIA and trying to blame it on one crazy person.

As for the international situation at the time — I think it’s very important to understand this because there is a sort of parallel to today. The CIA misinterpreted several key incidents in the world, including those to which you referred: the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty [FLAG: transcribed as “Cardinal Mincenti” — verify spelling] in Hungary, and then the return of Korean War prisoners. Neither of those episodes really had to do with mind control, but in the CIA, they were interpreted that way. And this gave the CIA a reason to pretend that its research was purely defensive. So I think when you consider the world situation and the sense in Washington that we’re surrounded by enemies, that becomes a very dangerous environment.

Conspiracy theories stem from the growth of the covert sphere. There’s a great contradiction in American life — that we pretend to uphold certain principles at home and abroad, but it’s evident to many Americans that we actually operate in opposition to those principles, and we operate by secret and anti-democratic means. That contributes to suspicion of government. The very existence of MKUltra proves that some of the wildest fantasies about secret government research are actually close to reality. That makes the paranoid mindset seem ever more rational.

BOEBERT:

MKUltra ultimately encompassed at least a hundred and forty-nine sub-projects involving more than eighty institutions — universities, hospitals, prisons, pharmaceutical companies — often funded through cutout foundations to conceal CIA sponsorship. Can you detail how these funding and operational security mechanisms worked in practice?

KINZER:

As for the foundations — Gottlieb created a couple of bogus foundations. They’re called cutouts in CIA slang. These are foundations that appear to be independent but are actually fully funded and controlled by the CIA. It was those foundations that approached hospitals and clinics and asked them to become involved in research, particularly into LSD. So many of the institutions where these experiments took place did not even realize that those foundations were actually covers for the CIA.

BOEBERT:

Thank you very much. And Madam Chair, I yield.

Nancy Mace continues her reign of stupidity

LUNA:

I now recognize Representative Mace from South Carolina.

MACE:

Dr. Ginexi, you work with the NIH, correct?

DR. GINEXI:

No, I am no longer affiliated with the NIH.

MACE:

When did you leave the NIH?

DR. GINEXI:

April of last year.

MACE:

Did you ever speak with Anthony Fauci or any of your NIH colleagues when you were there?

Another great scientific mind. I forgot that she was going to be there.

DR. GINEXI:

No.

MACE:

Do you believe that the NIH or Dr. Fauci lied to the American people about COVID?

DR. GINEXI:

No.

MACE:

Are you familiar with Dr. Fauci’s statements to Congress about COVID?

DR. GINEXI:

No.

MACE:

You didn’t watch any of Dr. Fauci. You worked at the NIH and you didn’t watch any of Dr. Fauci.

I love how they think that people at NIH, like we’re just sitting around all day watching Tony Fauci.

MACE:

Do you think that the COVID shots harm American citizens?

DR. GINEXI:

No, I do not.

MACE:

Do you think that the COVID shots cause turbo cancers?

DR. GINEXI:

No.

MACE:

Have you read any — do you know if the NIH or NIAID track COVID shot injuries?

That’s not their job. The CDC and the FDA do that.

DR. GINEXI:

I am not aware of any harmful tracking. This is not my area of expertise.

MACE:

What is your area of expertise?

DR. GINEXI:

I’m a research psychologist, and I did not work at NIAID.

MACE:

And you’re here for what reason?

DR. GINEXI:

I am here to testify about what is happening to the NIH right now.

You’re doing great, Liz. Don’t let her throw you off.

MACE:

You are here to testify about MKUltra?

DR. GINEXI:

I am not an MKUltra expert.

MACE:

Why did the Dems send you here if you’re not an MKUltra expert?

DR. GINEXI:

But I am an expert in human subjects protection, which is related, and in the conduct of human subjects research.

She’s an expert in the ways that the government is being dismantled, and that’s why the Democrats asked her. But you don’t know anything about MKUltra, which is the purpose of this hearing. And I’m grateful for her being here.

MACE:

All right. So I have a couple questions for our witnesses who are here to talk about MKUltra. Mr. O’Neill, what are some of the worst abuses that you’re aware of in the MKUltra program?

She’s very, very, very fucking stupid.

O’NEILL:

I can start by naming one in particular that always sticks in my mind. In the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, a group of African American inmates was segregated and fed what were described in the protocol as double, triple, and quadruple doses of LSD every day for seventy-seven days.

MACE:

Did they all survive?

O’NEILL:

We have no idea what happened to them. This has stuck with me ever since I wrote that book. What happened to them? Did they ever find out what was given to them? Did they think they were going crazy?

MACE:

Do you think we’re still experimenting on prisoners or people in prison today? Yes, we’re giving them gender-affirming care.

O’NEILL:

I don’t have any information about that. I’m hoping there’ll be another book about what’s happening now.

MACE:

What are some of the worst abuses in MKUltra?

KINZER:

There were many. The Frank Olson case, which was referenced earlier — that was a murder. I don’t believe that was a suicide. The motivation was because he was going to be a whistleblower. He worked at the CIA. He worked in the development of biological weapons. He was planning to go public and announce that the United States government was using biological weapons in the Korean War. And also he was going to talk about what he knew about MKUltra experiments, including lethal experiments.

MACE:

How many people do you think died through the MKUltra program or were murdered?

KINZER:

No idea. Those who died largely were outside the United States. Many people were experimented to death in that safe house in Germany that I visited. And people in the neighborhood told me they knew what was going on in that house, and that people who were experimented to death are now buried in what used to be forest plots that are now covered over.

MACE:

Do you think the German government knew what the U.S. government was doing? Do you think there was a partnership there?

KINZER:

Yes. There is a memo that was written by the German Secret Service to Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of Germany, telling him: Americans are here capturing citizens, capturing people and conducting extreme experiments, which are in violation of German law. And Adenauer decided to put that aside and not to investigate further.

MACE:

I have one more question. Is this a massive cover-up by the U.S. government?

KINZER:

It’s certainly a coverup of what happened in the past.

MACE:

Mr. O’Neill?

O’NEILL:

Oh, absolutely, yes.

Look at all these institutions we should shut down!

LUNA:

I now recognize Mr. Kerr from Pennsylvania for five minutes.

KERR:

To Dr. Kinzer and Mr. O’Neill — can you name the locations, say the prisons, the hospitals, the cutout institutions, that would be familiar to the American people?

O’NEILL:

At the end of the nineteen seventy-seven hearings, Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Daniel Inouye demanded that there be an investigation to find out who were the perpetrators, where were the experiments conducted, and most importantly, to locate victims, compensate them, notify them — because many didn’t even know they’d been experimented on — and give them lifetime medical care. President Jimmy Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell said the federal government will begin an investigation. That never happened. Instead, the CIA created something called the Victim’s Task Force to investigate itself. It was a two-man investigation, and they completely avoided institutional experimental programs.

You’re asking about the hospitals — the Oklahoma City Hospital, the Lackland Air Force Base Hospital, Lexington Addiction Center, the Holmesburg Prison, Vacaville Prison, universities all over the country, Yale, Ivy League universities — none of those records had been touched. There was also a criminal investigation that was supposed to start into Gottlieb’s destruction of the records. The DOJ was supposed to investigate. They just kept passing it off and passing it off. I asked Griffin Bell what happened to all those investigations, and he said, “It just must have fallen through the cracks.”

KERR:

Is it possible that documentation remains at the prisons, the treatment centers, the universities where these things were conducted?

O’NEILL:

Yeah. I found Dr. West’s records at UCLA in his files. Hospital records are really hard to get because of HIPAA laws, and prison records from the Bureau of Prisons do have a lot. So yeah, it is possible. There are still documents buried places.

KERR:

What were the average ages of the people experimented on?

O’NEILL:

Well, there were adolescent studies done in juvenile detention facilities and jails with kids who were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and at institutional schools for wayward kids — the National Training School for Boys here in Washington, D.C. had them. So it ranged from pre-adolescent through any age.

KERR:

If you could hazard a guess at the number of potential victims?

O’NEILL:

There were a hundred and forty-nine programs that we know of. And that’s what we know of. Everything we know of is minuscule compared to what was really going on. I mean, that could have been in the tens of thousands. And I believe that’s another reason that nothing was pursued — because if those people were compensated, it could have bankrupted the United States.

KINZER:

There’s been considerable progress in this regard in Canada. There was MKUltra research going on at a psychiatric hospital in Canada, and the Canadian government has made a real effort to try to find out who the victims were, also to compensate them and to provide them with medical treatment. So if we’re looking for an example of a place where it was done better, even though it was on a much smaller scale, Canada would be a place to look.

KERR:

Other than embarrassment to the federal government — the individuals involved are probably all deceased at this point — what is the reason for the mass redaction of the information that we do have?

KINZER:

Shame? I think it stands to reason that the individuals involved in conducting and authorizing this activity are probably all deceased. I make those arguments in my FOIA requests, but it doesn’t get me anywhere.

[Time expires.]

The very first black site was MKULTRA

LUNA:

I’m now going to go to something I believe Representative Boebert would like to elaborate on. Dr. Kinzer, what you stated about potentially their bodies — the German government — if that is indeed the case, can you elaborate further on what you were hearing from people in that area and on the potential locations of bodies?

KINZER:

First of all, the memo that Chancellor Adenauer received is on the record. You can find that memo warning that these operations are going on. I did speak to people who lived in that area, and they all understood. Some of them had cooperated with an investigation by Der Spiegel that called that house the CIA torture center. In that article, it said there were deaths, but the number is not known. So it was a secret to us. But what we were doing in that house was really not even a secret to the people in the neighborhood. It reminds me of the bombing of Cambodia. It was a secret to us. But if you lived in Cambodia, you would have known about it.

That all these neighbors knew what was going on and nobody said anything. They were like, oh, it’s cool — the German government’s working with the U.S. government — like, what are you talking about?

LUNA:

Just to confirm — when you found the initial transcripts with the chancellor, was there a response from the U.S. government to the Germans?

KINZER:

No. The U.S. government would possibly have advised Adenauer not to pursue it, but I don’t think Adenauer would have even needed to be told that. He would see it. He would understand that his close partnership with the United States made it impossible for him to criticize anything the U.S. was doing. Don’t forget, this was not so long after the end of the Second World War.

There was never any effort by the United States to reveal anything about what happened in Germany. One of the FOIA requests that I made that was never fulfilled, and one that I would urge you to pursue, is: what was Sidney Gottlieb doing during two years in Germany? He went to Germany and lived there as a case officer. I was never able to find out what he did during those two years in Germany. There were huge numbers of MKUltra experiments going on in Germany, including a number that were fatal. And since he was in charge of MKUltra, that would be a very interesting catch of documents to find.

LUNA:

We will definitely be following up. For either Dr. Kinzer or Mr. O’Neill: declassified CIA records have revealed that officers deployed overseas used USAID funding as official cover for operational work that had nothing to do with the mission of USAID — i.e. humanitarian aid, medical relief. In some cases, CIA officers operated under USAID cover and engaged in lethal activity. Is it possible that USAID may have been used overseas to further MKUltra, for example, on prisoners of war? Since part of USAID’s mission was to administer drugs to poor and needy populations, would the organization have abused its mandate by poisoning foreign populations or creating dissociated states for interrogation?

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

KINZER:

I can’t speak directly to AID, but it’s certainly true that during this period, the United States was using publicly announced official government agencies to carry out covert action. We now know, for example, that five percent of all the money appropriated for the Marshall Plan was diverted for covert activities. A number of U.S. agencies were used as cover by covert operatives. That AID could have been one of them sounds very likely to me. And the NIMH admitted allowing itself to be used for covert funding of MKUltra experiments in the nineteen seventies when the operation was disclosed.

All the Manchurian candidates

BURCHETT:

Thank you, Chair. I remember when all the talk about MKUltra broke, and there were lawsuits, and the CIA and the federal government said that this didn’t exist. And then they came back and said, well, it does exist, but we’re not doing it anymore. My question is: which lie do we believe?

KINZER:

If any current research is going on and if it’s conducted in any comparable level of secrecy to the original MKUltra, it’s very deeply secret.

BURCHETT:

It’s going to be hard for Congress to act when they’re so dadgum compromised. I put myself in the place of one of those senior CIA officers — the ones back in the nineteen fifties — and I’m thinking: well, other people must be doing this, we’d be falling behind if we don’t do it. And nobody’s looking over our shoulders. I think there is a definite air of urgency and total secrecy.

BURCHETT:

What are the possibilities that what we’ve learned in MKUltra — now that it has advanced so much to algorithms and the computer and getting to loners — that some of these loners could, through this mass propagation of whatever you’re doing, cause someone to maybe take a shot at a president?

Manchurian candidate shit.

O’NEILL:

I know there’s a lot of speculation out there about the Butler shooting and I guess even the Charlie Kirk shooting. I just hate to speculate because I don’t know. I have no firsthand knowledge whether those guys were programmed through radio waves or through their computer activity. So I would never hazard a guess, except to say what I’ve already said — that they developed means that we’ve never been told about many years ago. And I imagine they’ve evolved to be much more effective now.

BURCHETT:

Don’t you think that they could cast this broad net through these algorithms and other things, and maybe they don’t know the exact person it’s going to affect, but they know what type of person it’s going to affect, and they know it’s going to happen? And that way they can’t predict when it’s going to happen, but they think it will happen. And then that way they can sort of wash their hands of this whole thing — we didn’t have anything to do with it — but in fact, they really did, because they put this out there.

I love that he did not follow up on the MKUltra and Charlie Kirk.

KINZER:

It sounds to me like you’re describing something like the Martin Luther King assassination. The FBI didn’t carry it out, but it created such a climate — denouncing King as the most dangerous man in America, putting out all this material about how he was helping communists — that they must have thought: it’s going to filter down. Somebody will take action, and then we can say we didn’t have anything to do with it. And James Earl Ray was a third-rate thief. He made an incredible shot — one foot on a commode, one foot in a bathtub, leaning out of a window. The next day, all the shrubbery was cut in front of the flophouse he was staying in. There’s a lot on that one that won’t be discussed.

And the evidence for this is that the shrubbery was trimmed outside the flophouse.

Mockingbird, radio waves, and direct energy weapons

BOEBERT:

Thank you. When we’re bringing up Operation Naomi and MKUltra, there’s Operation Mockingbird that was going on at the same time as MKUltra, and it really ties into what Congressman Burchett was talking about with radio waves — where you have this Venn diagram of individual people and the military casting a broader net. So you have the radio waves, computer activity, Operation Mockingbird, the programming that is taking place. So what do you see in relation to what was happening then and what we are seeing now that could be types of the same kind of programs, and even using direct energy weapons or the like?

O’NEILL:

I would just like to say — there was an objective outlined in the early proposals for MKUltra to do experimentation to see whether they could do mass conversion, you know, convert entire populations.

Mass formation psychosis is something that Robert Malone always talks about. This is bioweapons of MKUltra stuff at population scale.

O’NEILL:

And Operation Mockingbird played into that. If people don’t know, that was where CIA assets or co-opted people in the media would write basically propaganda and try to control the thoughts and beliefs of the population.

BOEBERT:

Is it still going on today?

O’NEILL:

I wouldn’t be surprised.

BOEBERT:

Dr. Kinzer, do you have anything on this?

KINZER:

I would say only that in the modern age, maybe radio waves and drugs are not necessary to control people’s minds. We have such a great collaboration of advertising, propaganda, press, social media. Marginalized and real debate is frustrated because people are not given access to full amounts of information. So that’s a way of controlling minds of populations. It doesn’t even require sophisticated electronics.

In other words, release my FOIA records so that I can write my next book.

O’NEILL:

I would just like to reiterate — conspiracy theories are so widespread in America. It has to do with the disassociation between what we say we are and do and what we really are and do. This has become more and more clear to more and more people. Therefore, they’re suspicious of nefarious dealings by the U.S., and they’re also suspicious of other things that aren’t nefarious at all. But there’s just this mentality that is created by the covert sphere, and that is what makes people realize that things that used to seem really far-fetched are not so far-fetched after all.

KINZER:

I’d argue with this by saying that I don’t think it’s withholding information from people, it’s lying to people that is causing the problem with trust.

The American taxpayer whose money is being stolen is being stolen by this current administration, not anything else, not certainly our government agencies working on behalf of American people.

LUNA:

Thank you, Representative Boebert. Representative Burleson, do you have any further questions?

Charles Manson was the CIA’s MKULTRA muse

BURLESON:

Mr. O’Neill, going back to Charles Manson and the Helter Skelter incident — can you explain how someone who is an illiterate musician somehow became a cult leader and was able to inspire all of these individuals to do crazy things?

O’NEILL:

Unfortunately, I spent twenty years trying to find out how that happened. What I was able to prove was that from the moment Manson was released from federal prison in nineteen sixty-seven, he violated his parole, went to the Bay Area without permission, and was immediately put under the supervision of a federal parole officer who basically gave him leniency as he gathered his group of followers, gave them drugs, dominated them, turned them into more or less subservient robots who would do anything he said — all under the watchful eye of a parole officer named Roger Smith, who was also doing drug research at the same clinic that Jolly West had set up his operation.

So, I mean, this whole thing is so dumb. The idea is that MKUltra was basically committing all these crimes nonstop and was really, really successful at mind control — when twenty years in, Sidney Gottlieb, the guy who ran the program, said it was a complete failure. Tom O’Neill is saying that literally MKUltra had hired Charles Manson as a consultant because he was so good at being a cult leader and doing mind control. This makes absolutely no sense. There’s no proof of any of this — there’s this parole officer, and there’s this clinic, and there’s Charles Manson, and he’s giving everybody LSD and they’re going out and murdering people because he’s a serial killer and he’s insane. And somehow this is like, the CIA saw this and said, let’s hire that guy. Why is a parole officer running an amphetamine research clinic? And you know, he’s Charles Manson’s parole officer. What are you talking about?

O’NEILL:

I believe he was manipulated, and at the very least given freedom to do what he did while he was being observed.

O’NEILL:

And then the same individual Jolly West ends up — a year after the letter that I quoted in my statement, a year later on July third, nineteen fifty-four — a three-year-old girl was abducted and found later in a gravel pit, murdered, next to a car that had been abandoned. The search party that found the little girl’s body was approached by a man who was an airman at the base. He asked them where he was and how he had gotten there. He was arrested for the murder and described by the military officers who had him in custody as being in a trance or dazed. He didn’t have any drugs in his system. He didn’t recognize his wife when she was brought to see him. And at his trial, where Jolly West was his advising psychiatrist who examined him, it emerged that he had actually been being treated at the hospital at Lackland in an experimental program to cure his chronic debilitating migraine headaches. And he was executed four years later. And then years later, West ends up volunteering to handle Jack Ruby.

BURLESON:

In your expert opinion, were Jack Ruby and Manson assets of the intelligence agencies specifically pertaining to MKUltra?

O’NEILL:

Theoretically — Manson, I’ve never been able to prove absolutely. Jack Ruby — I believe. The Warren Commission investigation had Allen Dulles, the former CIA director who authorized and ran MKUltra until he was fired by President Kennedy, sitting on it. The CIA liaison to the commission — who handled the information coming from the CIA back and forth to the Warren Commission — was Richard Helms, who was a direct supervisor of Jolly West. They knew who West was. They knew what West was capable of and what they had paid him to do and what he had reported to them that he could do, including inducing mental disorders in people. That was never disclosed to the commission as far as anyone knows. So I believe that West was put in there to keep Jack Ruby from telling his story.

Good lord. But you don’t have any actual evidence of this.

LUNA:

I now recognize Representative Boebert for five minutes. Okay. Closing. I just want to thank you all for being here today and we will be following up. Dr. Kinzer, on your request to fully redact — I’ll be following up personally with the director of the CIA on the MKUltra files that we do have. Also, as I noted earlier, there will be more that will be declassified, specifically pertaining to newly found records. I did also want to just state that for the record, in regards to what statements were made earlier regarding the German government, we will also be following up on that. If there are indeed people that were victims of this that have been buried, we would like to know who those people are and who their families are as well, in order to correct the historical wrongdoings of this government.

Without further ado — all members have five legislative days within to submit materials and additional written questions for the witnesses, which will be forwarded to them. Without objection, the task force stands adjourned.

What this hearing was really about

Whew. All right. That was unhinged, and I’m really, really sorry that we missed some of the best parts. I was screaming in frustration because I could see them occurring while I was desperately trying to fix my audio. I really apologize for that, guys.

Next time I’m just going to go ahead and restart my computer fresh before doing one of these things, because I think that all of the hooking up, unhooking, all the stuff that I do with my computer all day just made the software unhappy. So I hope it wasn’t MKUltra mind control. I guess the CIA could have been getting into my computer — I know that I’m a high-value target, so I do try to keep my cybersecurity tight, but they got me again.

Let me just go over a few of the highlights that happened here. I think probably one of the things that people really should keep in mind when thinking about this hearing is that the point of the hearing is not actually to interrogate things that happened seventy years ago or hold anybody accountable for it. It’s really to make sure that there is a pretext for doing all of the dismantling to the government that they are going to do.

They really covered all of the bases. They got into MK Naomi, and that is some advanced-level MKUltra conspiracy knowledge. MK Naomi, as one of the witnesses said, was a sort of joint collaborative effort between the U.S. military and the CIA in which they were trying to make mind-controlled bioweapons. Now, this made me scream internally the second that I heard it, because the former ASPR — the Administrator for Strategic Preparedness and Response, Bob Kadlec — put out a report last year with the Scowcroft Institute at Texas A&M University that basically said that the pandemic was a neurocognitive bioweapon that was made to induce long COVID and disrupt Western society. So the idea of MK Naomi is still very much an idea that’s floating around. And that’s where this gets really chilling.

This whole hearing was about holding our own government accountable. They get these two expert witnesses in — Tom O’Neill, who wrote this absolutely unhinged book in which he finds all of these connections. And I mean, this is classic conspiracy theory stuff. You have your little photo here and your newspaper clipping here on your little conspiracy board and you’re drawing things with a string between them, but you’re not actually confirming that those connections are anything real. That’s really what guys like Tom O’Neill do best. They point to a lot of different facts that, when taken together and framed in the right way, look like they could be nefarious.

They are arguing that the US was in the business of making bioweapons to do this mind control at population scale. They’re alleging that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by somebody who got MKUltra’d into assassinating him. And that there have been all these other deaths, including of a three-year-old girl on a military base, from somebody who got MKUltra’d. So they’re making Manchurian candidates. They’re making secret assassins. They’re doing all this mind control stuff. And they are really not talking about the actual horrible stuff that happened with MKUltra.

I mean, they did a little bit. You know, my colleague and friend Liz Ginexi was there getting all sorts of shit from Nancy Mace and from Lauren Boebert. Two women who, I should add, are completely unqualified to ask somebody like Dr. Ginexi a serious question — which they demonstrated clearly, because Nancy Mace just started going in on her about how she doesn’t have any expertise about MKUltra. And you know what? I don’t have any expertise about MKUltra specifically either. I’ve looked into it just because I figured I had to, because MKUltra is the same thing as lab leak. It is the same thing as anti-vax. It is the same thing as every single pandemic conspiracy theory — that we actually had lockdowns, that people died from vaccines, that people died from school closures, that people died because of pandemic and public health measures, or that Tony Fauci started the pandemic. This is the same playbook.

And I’m going to get some clips to share with you tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even be able to bring Liz on and we can chat about it together. She started getting asked about, you know, did Fauci tell her about how he started a lab leak, and did she have knowledge of Fauci starting the lab leak? Liz Ginexi was not a senior program official at NIAID — which is the IC that Tony Fauci ran when he was in charge of it for fifty years. NIAID is the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That’s the virus department at NIH. That’s what Tony Fauci ran. Liz Ginexi did not run that. She is a research psychologist by training, and she has administered nearly a billion dollars in federal programs over the years or contributed to them, which has resulted in some really tremendous breakthroughs.

NIH has been a tremendous powerhouse for the American economy. It has allowed us to have all kinds of innovative new drugs. I think three hundred and fifty-four out of three hundred and fifty-six drugs that were approved between two thousand ten and two thousand nineteen, Liz said in her opening statement, were all the direct results of NIH-funded research. So she was there to actually talk about what the government was really doing in terms of scientific research.

USAID did not participate in mind control experiments

Because MKUltra ended in nineteen seventy-three. And while horrible things were done as part of MKUltra, nobody is pro-unconsented human experimentation on prisoners and children and people in the hospital. Nobody would take a position that would be for that even if they actually were for that. So I find this whole thing to be very disingenuous.

The question kept coming up: do you think this is still going on? Do you think there’s still MKUltra-ing happening? And that resulted in probably my favorite moment from this hearing — when Tom O’Neill suggested that Charlie Kirk was assassinated by somebody who is the product of modern-day MKUltra. The experts both talked about algorithms and things like that, as did some of the congress people, who were entirely Republicans. The point of all of them, though, comes back to this: trying to convince the American people that a bunch of things that didn’t happen actually happened, and that the government, the old government, the government under President Joe Biden, was not working for Americans and was doing all of these horrible things. Tyranny. Eroding our most basic freedoms and liberties. All those vaccines that killed so many people.

The reality is COVID killed a lot of people during the pandemic. Vaccines didn’t kill people during the pandemic. COVID killed people during the pandemic. And that’s the truth.

What they keep doing is bringing these experts in for these hearings to spread information that they talk about as if it’s true, and it’s completely not. And you saw Tom O’Neill and Stephen Kinzer say to almost everything that they don’t know — because they don’t. Most of the MKUltra files were destroyed. They were incinerated. They were burned in nineteen seventy-three, more than fifty years ago. So we are never going to find out a lot of these things. And you know what? If you want to go on a little document hunt and try to find administrative records and metadata that would shed more light on this, by all means, do it. I don’t think anybody opposes compensating the survivors of people who were wronged by the MKUltra program. Some of the stuff that they’re talking about is pretty horrific and some of it’s true. So I do think that those efforts should happen — but not in this context.

Why do we need to have a congressional hearing about this? The reason the Republicans think we need to have a congressional hearing about this is because they want the appearance of something official. So that when they say these ridiculous lies over and over again — for example, Charlie Kirk got assassinated by a guy who was MKUltra’d — people are going to say, well, congress people are saying this in a congressional hearing under oath. So there must be some truth to it. They’re experts — Congress brought them in to provide expert testimony.

And even though I know that those two guys are full of shit, you know, they’re documenting some historical things that happened with MKUltra, but again, the documents largely don’t exist. While it’s totally fine to be speculative and to have an opinion and to have a belief — all totally fine — don’t come into Congress into a task force on declassification and insinuate that a program that ended more than fifty years ago is still going on today. And it’s responsible for assassinations of political figures. This is not what you do when you’re saying we want accountability for something that ended fifty-three years ago, while showing no evidence whatsoever that it’s going on now in the U.S. federal government.

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The same playbook, coming again from Rand Paul

Prior to this hearing, there was a hearing before the Senate that involved this guy before the HSGAC Committee — the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Rand Paul is the chair of — where he brought in this guy, James Erdman III, who is a so-called CIA whistleblower. And you know what? He’s blowing the whistle on all of their big issues. He blew the whistle on MKUltra. He blew the whistle on Fauci lab leak stuff. He blew the whistle on foreign biolabs. He’s just blowing the whistle on every single talking point that Tulsi Gabbard raised on her way out the door at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Now, in HHS, we’ve seen this government use things like this — CDC screwed up the pandemic, so let’s gut it. NIH was evil Fauci and the lab leak, so let’s gut that, let’s not give out any of these grants. FDA is a total shit show, so let’s turn that into a mechanism for extortion. They just keep using all of these different things to justify the cuts that are happening. And ultimately, these are all lies being used to justify taking tax dollars away from services that Americans benefit from and redirecting them to the oligarchs that are trying to take control of our democracy.

I really find these things to be intolerable and full of liars. And the reason that I’m watching all of this stuff is because I agree that the government needs to be held accountable for the lies that it’s told that have harmed Americans. And what’s happening now in these hearings is exactly that — we are hearing our elected officials, instead of standing up for us and our democracy, talking about the wildest conspiracy theories you can possibly imagine.

They are trying to say that USAID, which provided vaccinations, which provided HIV medications, which provided cancer treatments to people all over the world — and we’ve been hearing in the last week about all the people who have died as a result of not having the foreign aid that USAID was providing — they’re trying to say that USAID has been used to secretly continue the MKUltra program, doing unethical, without-informed-consent experimentation on poor people around the world, and calling it foreign aid.

In my case, I know of multiple ways that the lack of USAID funding has impacted the Bundibugyo Ebola virus response in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For example, one of the reasons this was detected so late was because cold-chain infrastructure that had been funded by USAID had been dismantled, so samples were not able to travel a long distance from Tori province to Kinshasa for testing. People have died as a result of not having USAID. And there is absolutely no evidence of anything like what they’re alleging. That is reprehensible to say, especially because it’s being used to justify the fact that USAID was cut at all, and now people are trying to hold the government accountable for the fact that it’s going to kill millions of kids. And they don’t want to be held accountable for that. So they’re going to redirect the blame.

They’re going to say that actually, it was the old government. It was not the Trump government. Welcome to the golden age. Welcome to our tyranny. We hate Joe Biden’s MKUltra tyranny. We’re going to put a stop to all of this bad — and made-up — shit that was going on. So that’s really what this hearing was about today.

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Thanks for sticking with me through all of this

I just think it’s really important for people to follow along with this and hold their feet to the fire. Somebody needs to be documenting this, because one day there will be the opportunity for accountability. And when that day comes, I want to be able to point to when Nancy Mace told Liz Ginexi that she wasn’t an expert on anything and why is she even here, if all she wants to talk about is the destruction being done to our government and not this MKUltra conspiracy theory bullshit.

With that — I’m not doing a daily ranting show today because I have been on here already for two hours straight, there were a lot of production issues, and I’m feeling a bit peaked because I haven’t really been having a great week health-wise. So I’m going to sign off right now, but I’m hoping that tomorrow Liz can come and join me and we can unpack a little bit more of what happened in this stupid, stupid, stupid fucking hearing.

I’m also going to be talking to my friends at the Save America Movement about writing up a Substack on this and providing some more information so that you guys can make sense of all this. Because to a lot of people, I think watching, it just looks crazy and clownish and like they’re not really very competent — which is all true, by the way. But that’s by design. The dismantling of our current form of government and its replacement with an authoritarian dictatorship is by design.

The Americans, the elected officials who have taken an oath to their constituents and to the Constitution and to our country — they need to do their job, or we should hold them accountable. And so that’s why I’m going to continue covering stupid-ass hearings like this. Because you should understand that the mechanism by which our government is being taken apart is incredibly stupid. But you do need to know about it.

Thanks very much for bearing with me through all of the production problems. And as always, I strive to improve constantly. Don’t hold it against me. I will get some clips, hopefully, that have better sound of anything that you guys missed.

If you don’t already subscribe to me, all of my content’s free. But if you subscribe, it would really help me a lot — just in terms of being able to get the word out further, being able to let you know whenever I have some new material out. Right now I think the most powerful weapons that we have to fight for our freedom and our democracy are words — sharing information, information that’s reliable, information that people can actually trust and use. And so I’m going to continue doing that.

See you tomorrow at 1 PM. I will be back for my usual ranting show. Hopefully Liz will be there too. Take care, everybody.

Links from this episode

The hearing

• House Oversight Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets — hearing video (YouTube)

• House Oversight Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets

• James Erdman III HSGAC hearing — “Whistleblower Testimony on the COVID Coverup” (May 2026)

• Save America Movement Substack

• HSGAC Committee (Rand Paul, chair)

MKUltra and predecessor programs

• Project MKUltra — Wikipedia

• Project Artichoke / Project Bluebird — Wikipedia

• Sidney Gottlieb — Wikipedia

• Frank Olson (CIA officer thrown from hotel window) — Wikipedia

• Operation MK Naomi — Wikipedia

• Operation Mockingbird — Wikipedia

• Operation Paperclip — Wikipedia

• Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West (MKUltra-linked psychiatrist) — Wikipedia

• Cardinal Mindszenty (Hungary trial) — Wikipedia

• Warren Commission — Wikipedia

• Der Spiegel

Key figures

• Anna Paulina Luna — Wikipedia

• Tulsi Gabbard — Wikipedia

• Lauren Boebert — Wikipedia

DRC/USAID context

• Bundibugyo ebolavirus — Wikipedia

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me tomorrow at 1 pm ET and if you find this useful, please consider subscribing!

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You can do it at a trot. You can do it at a gallop. You can do it real slow so your heart won’t palpitate. Just don’t be late. Do the Puyallup. All the people and the animals down at the fair. They do the Puyallup like they didn’t have a care. And it looks like so much fun to do, I think I’m going to learn how to do it too.

“Do the Puyallup”

Hi everybody. Welcome to my daily ranting show. I’m Dr. Angie Rasmussen. I haven’t been feeling super hot today, so please forgive the more casual look. But I just couldn’t resist doing an episode today where we’re talking about the Great American State Fair that happened this weekend. Because I am from a town called Puyallup, Washington. We are famous for our fair, in fact. It used to be called the Puyallup Fair, and the slogan was do the Puyallup. It always had better turnout than whatever the fuck that was that happened at the National Mall this weekend.

Today is apparently MAHA Monday at the Great American State Fair. And let me just let Fox & Friends tell you about this.

I think being healthy, though, is about having some choices, and it’s a philosophy. And for those of you that remember when we were in grade school, you would take this presidential fitness test. Yes. And it was tough because you had to do it. Well, President Trump just brought it back. I know, which makes me nervous because I had to do pull-ups, and it wasn’t great in front of all the other girls in school. But I think it’s a philosophy. Having fun and knowing where the balance is is part of it.

In front of all the other girls, huh? (Trump did in fact bring back the Presidential Fitness Test by executive order in July 2025, with RFK Jr. tasked to administer it.) Look at all those people not at that fair.

The Puyallup Fair (and my dad’s specially trained giant cows)

The Puyallup Fair is the Washington State Fair now. They’ve changed the name. And it celebrates everything that makes Washington State so fantastic, like our tech companies and our apples and our salmon. We have a great time at the Puyallup Fair.

And when I was a kid — this is a true story — my father actually did something incredibly rude. And let me just pull this image file here. We had these pavilions outside the Puyallup Fair. And my dad, he worked at a dairy. So I thought he was probably an expert on cows. I didn’t actually realize until I was a little older that he didn’t really have very much to do with cows at all. He was typically involved in stuff with pasteurizing milk, with processing it, with delivering it places, with making it into different products. So he wasn’t actually a cow expert.

And that should be known, because he told me when I was probably about four or five years old that these were specially trained giant cows that were standing very, very still, and they would rotate them out in shifts. And I never saw that, because it happened late at night when I was asleep. And this was a really, really well-trained cow that just held very, very still. And then, of course, when I got a little older, I realized that he had made that up. And I was pretty angry, because why would you lie to your kid about something like that? And he thought it was really funny. To this day, when we drive by the fair, my dad — those pavilions are gone now — but my dad will point to that and be like, remember where the cows used to hang out and hold still? Like, huh?

Anyways, I digress. The Puyallup Fair is really kind of all we have going, other than the daffodil parade in Puyallup. And I just love the fact that the Puyallup Fair routinely does way better numbers than this dumb shit.

The Great American State Fair: now with baptism pools

And we also do not have baptism pools at the Puyallup Fair. This is what’s going on at the Great American State Fair. I have to say, I don’t think that I would want to actually attend something like this where I could be baptized and go to church when I’m trying to, like, eat deep-fried Snickers bars and corn dogs. This is bullshit. Totally, totally lame state fair. And I don’t even understand why you’d have a national state fair. I mean, I guess all fifty states are represented. And these poor suckers, like Fox News — I swear to God, like most of the attendees are from Fox News. (Thanks to Aaron Rupar for getting all these clips, by the way.)

— For me. But a guy who knows all about places that are hot. Lawrence, LJ, you’re over in Texas, I think. — I was born in heat. Right across the mall. — Yeah, you were. In the rain. All right, so we’re right in front of the Texas tent. This is where everything big happens. If you look over there, there’s a rodeo. Everything big.

It’s bigger in Puyallup, I swear to God. You’re going to get horses, and that’s all from Texas. There’s, like, literally no horses or any people at that rodeo.

— This is the secretary. Hi.

Oh, look, it’s Brooke Rollins. Welcome. I bet for the next cabinet secretary to get fired. We’ll see.

Pretty poor showing, though, for the Great American State Fair. And I think it just goes to show how enthusiastic most Americans in fact are about the new era that we have entered — in which we celebrate America’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday by basically flushing what remains of our democracy down the toilet. Or maybe, you know, a poorly attended state fair honey bucket.

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The CDC emails: Orwell would be impressed

So that’s what’s going on this weekend in this regime. I did not go to the state fair like most Americans. I was doing something else. And in my case, I was actually reading this trove of emails that the Senate Health Committee obtained from former chief medical officer of the CDC, Debra Houry.

Now, these emails show basically what was going on inside this incredibly Orwellian situation at the CDC when Kennedy first came in as HHS secretary, and when he started firing all the people on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or the ACIP.

To give you a quick refresher, here’s what happened. In early June of last year, Bobby Kennedy, the Health and Human Services secretary, fired all seventeen members of the ACIP. Now, the ACIP is a panel of experts — external experts — that is convened by the CDC to go over all of the data about different vaccines and to make recommendations based on that data. They have very specific evidence-based frameworks for making these decisions, called GRADE and EtR.

GRADE would allow them to review all of the evidence objectively, make sure that the vaccines do have an acceptable safety record, look at how effective they are, and really accurately calculate risks and benefits — trying to figure out who that vaccine should be recommended for, if anybody. You know, sometimes some vaccines do not provide a significant benefit for people at different ages, if they have different pre-existing conditions. If they’ve had a condition or a disease before, they might not need a vaccine. Sometimes the vaccine’s risk can outweigh the benefits. So it’s really important that evidence, and ongoing evidence collection, informs this process. So that’s what GRADE does.

And EtR is the second part of this, that means evidence to recommendations, where they actually take that evidence that they synthesized using the GRADE framework and they convert it into an actual recommendation. Then they will vote on it, and then the CDC director will sign it, and then it gets published in the MMWR, and it’s an official CDC recommendation about vaccines. So that’s, like, how the vaccine schedule got made. That’s how all vaccine recommendations occur. And it actually is also really important for making sure that things like the VFC are funded — that’s the Vaccines for Children program, which provides free vaccination for all the recommended vaccines on the childhood schedule, for free, to low-income kids. And that is responsible for a significant — millions of children getting their normal immunizations in the US.

So the ACIP is an incredibly important expert panel that makes these recommendations. They’re not binding, it’s not law, but they have great importance and they carry a lot of weight, and they’re really, really important for public health.

So in June, Kennedy fired all seventeen of those highly qualified people who were on the ACIP and replaced them with a bunch of anti-vaxxers. Mostly anti-vaxxers. There’s anti-vaxxers like Robert Malone, who claims to have invented mRNA vaccine technology, and that’s why, therefore, he knows it is a government conspiracy to control your efforts. It’s the whole globalist regime that is imposing on your freedom with vaccines that he calls “psychological bioterrorism,” I believe, in his book, which is called PsyWar. And it’s about the whole mind-control war that the government is waging upon us. So, you know, these are totally unhinged people.

There was him, there was Martin Kulldorff, who is now running the HHS in-agency think tank that Kennedy put together and is sort of working behind the scenes to facilitate all of this bad anti-vax policy stuff. He was the original chair of the ACIP after Kennedy replaced the actually qualified people with this clown show that we have now.

And then, you know, we have Vicki Pebsworth. She’s a longtime nurse against vaccines who’s been talking about vaccine injuries. And also she’s super Catholic, so she doesn’t like the fact that some of the cells that are used to generate vaccines came from aborted fetuses. Vaccines do not actually contain fetal debris or fetal byproducts, as Kennedy and Pebsworth have implied, by the way. And it’s actually not a problem with the Catholic Church to get vaccinated, either. Multiple popes have actually weighed in on this issue — speaking as a proud vaccinated Catholic, although I am pro-choice. Anyhow.

So all these anti-vaxxers come in. Then there’s a couple other people who are just totally unqualified. They don’t really do that much. They just kind of sit there and agree with everything. And they’ve added a few more people as time has gone by. Some of these people have really risen to the occasion. I want to give a shout-out to my buddy, Joseph Hibbeln. He’s not my buddy. We’ve actually never met, but I have to say how impressed I am with Dr. Hibbeln’s work — his insistence on sticking to the GRADE framework and the EtR. Because the ACIP, composed of all of these people, has made absolutely catastrophic recommendations in terms of our vaccine policy.

They’ve attempted to deschedule a number of different vaccines. They’ve succeeded in descheduling the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose, which is going to, over decades, expose a lot of children to a chronic lifelong persistent infection that causes liver cancer and is completely preventable by the birth dose — the birth dose of the HBV vaccine. So, you know, that’s what they’re doing.

And what I just really loved about all of these emails — and there’s several hundred pages of them, so I’m not going to actually go through all of them — but this is just one example of some of the Orwellian craziness that is in here. Where basically this is Debra Houry emailing my friend and colleague, Demetre Daskalakis, who at the time was the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, or NCIRD, at CDC. And they’re talking about how Kennedy wants members of the ACIP — the current ACIP, the qualified ACIP — gone. And he wants to replace them with ten people that they’ve already decided.

And they say here that it doesn’t matter if they’ve been fired from a university, if they’ve spread vaccine disinformation, if they’ve done all of this stuff that is basically an example of the last people on earth that you would want sitting on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. It says that basically HHS has said that’s no problem, and that’s not a barrier to them getting approved — or conflicts of interest. So this is basically saying, like, we’re throwing out the entire process that we used to use to vet people for actual expertise, and we’re just going to go ahead and replace them with these ten random people who, it turns out, are these terrible anti-vaxxers.

So this is a wild collection of emails. There’s all kinds of stuff about firing Susan Monarez basically for not being willing to rubber-stamp all of Kennedy’s anti-vax wish list. There is all kinds of stuff about them literally, like, trying to downplay pro-vaccine material. Like, there was a campaign to encourage flu vaccination called From Wild to Mild, and that was ordered basically canceled to make sure that Americans did not have access to information about how to get a vaccine that could save their life.

So, you know, it’s pretty chilling stuff. I have a more comprehensive article coming out about it later today, so stay tuned for that. Because, God, it sounds like the CDC was a rough place to work last year.

Of course, most of the people in these emails are now gone from CDC. They’ve either resigned, been fired, or lost their job through the reductions in force that occurred last October, thanks to Russell Vought. We’ll get to him later. The CDC is a grim place now, but it seems like it was probably the most toxic workplace.

And I should add that in the middle of all of this — Americans seem to have forgotten, and President Trump has never once acknowledged it — the CDC was the subject of a domestic terror attack when a dude shot more than five hundred rounds at CDC, killed a police officer who was trying to defend people at CDC. And, you know, it’s a miracle that more people weren’t injured. That person was motivated by the fact that he thought that all of the problems in his life had been caused by a COVID vaccine injury. And this is an idea that Secretary Kennedy himself has espoused. So, you know — CDC, rough times.

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Tomorrow: Anna Paulina Luna’s MKUltra circus

But let’s talk about a different part of the government for a moment, because tomorrow I’m going to be up early covering the House Oversight Committee hearing that Anna Paulina Luna is throwing to examine the MKUltra experiments and their impact on public trust.

So, speaking of Orwellian — this is a conspiracy theory that the CIA has engaged in mind-control bullshit with its MKUltra program. And we’re going to be hearing from some experts, I guess, who are going to provide evidence of that, and Anna Paulina Luna is going to hold them accountable. Well — one of my friends and colleagues is also testifying, on the side of science, and is an expert in this topic.

But the fact is, there was no MKUltra experiment done in the way that Anna Paulina Luna is talking about, where mind control actually happened and there were people mind-controlling Americans or whatever. The impact on public trust is the fact that people like Anna Paulina Luna are making these crazy conspiracies up, and now we’re actually having hearings on this stuff in Congress. We are actually wasting taxpayer money on this dumb woman’s MKUltra conspiracy theory so that they can further undermine public trust — because that is the point of it.

That’s why also my colleagues are being attacked in virology. My colleagues in vaccinology are being attacked. We’re all being attacked for the same reason, essentially. We’re having things made up about us, about our professions, about our field. In my case, virologist case, it’s that we’re all these, you know, crazy sort of renegade virus hunters that are going out and finding new viruses so that we can, like, make them worse and then, like, get rich off of making vaccines from them. Or something. Or maybe bioweapons. I don’t know. But, you know, you can’t trust us. That’s the point. The point here is that you can’t trust the intelligence community and the CIA. You can’t trust the government. You can’t trust the old government. You can trust the new government. And it’s really, really scary. And it’s also very frustrating that this kind of stupidity is the mechanism that is being used to undo our democracy. But that’s what it is.

So, since it is science-related — even though I don’t really know that much about MKUltra — I’m still pretty sure that I’m going to be able to call out a lot of bullshit during this hearing. So I’m going to go ahead and cover it live. I hope that you’ll join me tomorrow. And we’ll see what Anna Paulina Luna and her expert panel have to say about this. And then I probably will be having, at some point, the person who is testifying about, I think, human subjects protections — not sure what, actually — but I might have that person on to talk about the experience. Anyways, stay tuned for that. See you tomorrow at ten a.m.

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Kenyan Ebola Prison, exactly as expected

OK, what else do we have on the agenda? Oh, right. This was fun. This is exactly what I expected.

So do you remember, about a month ago, Kenyan Ebola Prison was a big topic? So the US — Marco Rubio, secretary of state — said that we can’t have a single Ebola patient here in the US, that would be just the worst thing ever. So there’s a travel ban, which is stupid and doesn’t work. And there also is such a big travel ban that even Americans who’ve been in Uganda, DRC, or South Sudan — where, as far as I know, there hasn’t been an Ebola case yet — can’t come back to the US unless they do three weeks of quarantine at this field hospital that got stood up over a weekend in Kenya.

The reason it’s in Kenya is because the US Department of State extorted the Kenyan government for basically their health ministry’s entire budget, and promised them thirteen million dollars to build a quarantine facility, which I guess this thing is supposed to turn into. It’s on a Kenyan military base. And boy, do the people in Kenya not like this idea. I don’t blame them one bit.

Because guess what? In the US, we have biocontainment facilities that are designed, purpose-built for taking care of Ebola patients, providing them with the best possible care and also providing maximum containment with very well-trained staff. Now, as somebody who works in containment myself — you know, one of the most important things is training. You don’t let somebody go into a containment lab if they’ve had, you know, virtually no training. People take hours of classes before they go anywhere near a containment lab. I have a minimum of ten supervised entries for anybody that I’m training, but usually it’s far more than that, because I don’t let anybody go into containment unsupervised in my lab unless they have demonstrated, and I’m fully confident, that they are going to follow protocols. So I don’t have a minimum number that people can graduate from. You are ready to go into containment by yourself when we decide that you’re ready to go into containment by yourself, because you’ve demonstrated that you can be trusted in containment.

Now, in this facility — where, again, I remind you, this is a quarantine facility for people who have been working with Ebola, either humanitarian aid workers or medical aid workers. Now, for medical aid workers, guess what the two most common ways of getting Ebola are? Handling a dead body, or providing treatment care to a patient — to an Ebola patient. So a lot of these people are at high risk. There’s not enough PPE in many places in DRC. The situation is really, really bad. It’s out of control. There’s a ton of violence, because there’s basically a civil war going on. It is a situation where people coming out of this may actually have Ebola, and they may test positive for Ebola and develop symptoms of Ebola virus disease in this facility.

Now, this facility — it’s not clear to me that they actually have adequate containment. And certainly the training issue is a big deal, because this article came out in Bloomberg by Jessica Nix, and it basically said that the staff who is there has no experience with Ebola outbreaks. In some cases, they don’t have experience with outbreaks at all. They had a weekend of training, essentially, mostly administrative tasks.

Here in this picture, you see them practicing doffing. This is also one of the highest-risk procedures when you’re entering or exiting containment — removing your personal protective equipment. Because if there’s Ebola on the outside of it, and you touch it and then you touch your face or whatever, you could expose yourself to Ebola. And that’s probably how a lot of people who do get infected working in Ebola treatment units — where they have adequate PPE — are getting infected when they do. It’s during the doffing procedure. So it’s really important to know how to do this right. And boy, they got about ninety minutes of training.

That does not make me feel great about what would happen if somebody does test positive for Ebola at Kenyan Ebola Prison, because they will be essentially their Public Health Service and army workers who have had almost no training, taking care of somebody — which is, again, the highest risk for Ebola transmission — in a facility that has inadequate containment, in another country that has never had an Ebola outbreak.

So, I mean, all of this is just a recipe for an absolute disaster, where we have an Ebola outbreak that was effectively started by US foreign policy, enabled by the US military, by active-duty service members, and started by Americans who were quarantining there. So this whole situation is a disaster waiting to happen.

And it’s something that, again, I’m going to keep talking about. Because people tend to forget about Ebola as soon as they realize that it’s not going to affect them. And as soon as they realize that, like, oh, OK, it’s, you know, it’s terrible — but, like, there’s a lot of terrible things going on in the world, so I’m not going to think about it. And that’s understandable. There are a lot of terrible things going on in the world right now, and I understand why it’s not a priority for most people. But do consider that this would be a pretty big priority, because the US Army, the US military, is starting an outbreak on another military base in a foreign country that we just shut down — basically for their health ministry’s budget, against the wishes of their citizens.

To me, I mean — this is just, we could not be doing the Ebola thing any worse than we are doing right now. And I think that this is really something that people need to keep an eye on, because this facility — the second that there is an Ebola case there, it’s gonna be just a complete disaster, I think.

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Before I go: leave a comment for Russell Vought

OK, so, all of that fun, lovely news. I’m gonna sign off right now. But first, as always, I would like to point out — on Instagram, that link up there; on everything else, this link down here — please click that link and leave a comment to tell OMB director Russell Vought, who is trying to get his hands on one point one trillion dollars and more of your tax dollars so that he can, you know, reshape America from his fascist point of view — I don’t want that to happen. And I like having things like roads and schools and libraries and parks being paid for with my tax dollars, and not, you know, Christian white nationalists.

So I’m going to leave a comment and tell the federal government all about how much I love and appreciate my tax dollars going towards actual federal grants that benefit the American people and my community — not oligarchs and the crazy religious ideas that they have. And again, you know — baptizing people at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. Boy, does that not sound like a state fair that I would want to attend.

And on that note, I’m going to say goodbye. Please leave your comments, and I will see you tomorrow at ten a.m. for the MKUltra hearing in the House Oversight Committee. See ya.

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Related from me

• On the CDC/ACIP capture: Meet the Anti-Vax ACIP First Round Draft Picks of 2025! · The Vaccine Disinformation to Descheduling Pipeline · Evidence-Based ACIP is So Back

• On the hep B birth dose: Say Hello to Hepatitis B, Baby

• On Kenyan Ebola Prison: You Can’t Stop Ebola with More Ebola · Nobody Likes the Idea of Kenyan Ebola Prison · Illegal Kenyan Ebola Prison Declared Illegal by Kenya

Links from this episode

• Presidential Fitness Test executive order (July 2025) — whitehouse.gov

• Aaron Rupar, Public Notice — publicnotice.co

• Senate HELP Committee release of internal HHS/CDC emails (Sen. Sanders) — help.senate.gov

• CBS News on the Houry emails — cbsnews.com

• Kennedy fires/replaces ACIP with vaccine critics (CIDRAP) — cidrap.umn.edu

• ACIP evidence-based recommendation framework (GRADE/EtR), CDC — cdc.gov

• Dr. Joseph Hibbeln and the December 2025 ACIP meeting (Avalere) — advisory.avalerehealth.com

• ACIP ends universal hepatitis B birth dose; AAP response — publications.aap.org

• CDC cancels “From Wild to Mild” flu campaign (Fortune) — fortune.com

• CDC Atlanta shooting motivated by COVID-vaccine opposition (PBS) — pbs.org

• Luna announces MKUltra hearing (House Oversight) — oversight.house.gov

• “Trump Administration’s Ebola Response Raises Alarm Among US Health Workers,” by Jessica Nix (Bloomberg) — bloomberg.com

• Kenyan court and the Ebola facility deal (CNN) — cnn.com

• Public comment portal — regulations.gov

• OMB “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” comment docket — regulations.gov

  

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I feel that there is so much going on right now in the world that is so important to talk about, and I’m really, really grateful for all of you who joined me here to hear me complain about it — and to also, hopefully, make you aware of it and galvanize you to do something.

Lab leak movie week, again

So today, once again, it’s lab leak week here. Lab leak movie week here. We’ve had a nonstop parade of people in the Trump orbit going on conservative show after conservative show to talk about how Tulsi Gabbard’s declassified documents — the ones she dumped on her way out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — supposedly prove a lab leak. They don’t. They don’t show that there was a lab leak, they don’t show that Tony Fauci covered anything up, and they don’t show that he started the pandemic. They don’t really show anything other than Tony Fauci talking to the intelligence community about the possibility that it was a lab leak, talking to scientists who were looking into it, talking to everybody who was looking into it, and coming to the conclusion that — at least as far as Tony Fauci was concerned — it was not a lab leak.

I happen to agree with him, because part of his basis for thinking that are papers that I have co-authored. And that’s what the evidence shows.

So I feel that this is really important to keep talking about, because it’s very technical and it’s very boring. And unlike the other side, me and Tony Fauci and all of our colleagues are constrained by the fact that we don’t make shit up and tell lies. We are constrained by what the evidence shows us. That’s why we talk about the fact that there was no lab leak — because the evidence doesn’t support that there was a lab leak. The evidence really strongly supports that the virus emerged somehow around the Huanan seafood market, and that it most likely emerged from the wild animals that were being sold there. There’s a great deal of evidence about this. Sometime I’m just going to do an explainer where I go over all of it — maybe I’ll do an ask-me-anything kind of deal and answer all of your burning COVID origins questions.

But really, the stuff with Tony Fauci is not even about the origin of COVID. It’s about getting some payback for the pandemic. And it’s also about taking down, essentially, the federal government. Because if you can point at a public servant like Tony Fauci and say, “Look, they were doing things the old way, the democratic way — they were doing their job for the American people and not for the current political administration that’s in charge, and we think that’s bad, in fact we think that’s a crime, and so we’re going to prosecute them” — that’s what all of this lab leak stuff is about. It’s about creating a pretext to prosecute Fauci, despite the fact that he had a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden, explicitly because Biden anticipated that Fauci might be persecuted like this as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to turn America from a democracy into a dictatorship.

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Today it’s Peter Navarro’s turn

So let’s just take a look at what some of these folks are saying. Today it’s Peter Navarro’s turn.

Now, I was scrolling on the hell site — X, Twitter, whatever. Unfortunately, all of my enemies live there, and I still do have quite a few followers there too. Hi, everybody from X. I still go on that website. I still find it somewhat useful — at the very least, useful to keep track of all the terrible things my enemies are up to. And what did I stumble upon but Aaron Rupar from Public Notice, who does a wonderful service by watching all of this shit constantly and putting up the worst-but-best clips from this material.

So Peter Navarro went on Maria Bartiromo’s show on Fox Business. And boy, have I heard Maria Bartiromo say the words “gain of function research” more times in one week than I ever imagined I’d hear her say in my life. She sits there looking like a confused owl and just goes on and on about gain of function research. At what point will one of these people define what gain of function research actually is? I’m pretty sure none of them know. I’m pretty sure that if I asked Maria Bartiromo what her problem with gain of function research actually is, she wouldn’t be able to tell me anything other than “Tony Fauci did it, so it must be bad.”

No. The work that was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not gain-of-function research that wasn’t allowed under the contemporaneous oversight rules, the P3CO framework. Now, a lot of people will come back and say, “Well, Fauci designed P3CO and he was in charge of it, so it was written in such a way that nothing was gain-of-function research and it was a gain-of-function free-for-all.”

Okay. Gain-of-function research at the time was defined as making a potential pandemic pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic — meaning more severe — specifically in humans. Not in mice, not in monkeys, not in other species, other hosts, not in cells. It’s okay to make a virus grow to higher titers in cell culture, because that is not the same thing as what’s going to happen in a human. A virus growing to high titers — meaning there’s a lot of infectious virus per milliliter of culture fluid — is not the same thing as the virus becoming more transmissible. Whether a virus is transmitted from one host to another is a much more complicated process than just how much virus is there.

This is obviously not being discussed in a thoughtful or educated or at-all way on Maria Bartiromo’s show, especially not with senior economic or trade advisor — whatever he is — Peter Navarro. He’s an economist, right? Who is also a convicted felon, for his refusal to hand over documents related to January 6, because Peter Navarro is one of the biggest perpetrators of the big lie: that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. That is not true. Peter Navarro continues to repeat it. He continues to say all sorts of racist things, and — content warning — Peter Navarro is about to say some terrible things about China.

So without further ado, let me share with you this completely unhinged interview Peter Navarro did with Maria Bartiromo, in which he talks about the various consequences Tony Fauci should face for being a public servant for decades, running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, funding research that got us COVID vaccines within ten months instead of ten years, and generally saving millions of lives. That’s what Tony Fauci has done. And Peter Navarro is about to tell you why he should face all sorts of consequences for it.

Navarro: Look, I’m surprised people aren’t suing Fauci civilly for all the damages they did to their families and killing people and things like that.

People have tried to sue Fauci in civil court. The one case I’m aware of, they sued EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak, who was the PI on the grant that Fauci funded — the one that was the “gain-of-function research” everybody’s so worked up about. Peter Daszak was sued in New York State by a sort of famous anti-vax attorney who’s big into suing people for conspiracy-theory reasons, has represented a number of totally crazy people, and got a totally crazy expert witness for this case. And I believe it was dismissed or thrown out. It was basically saying: you created the pandemic, and we suffered injuries because of the pandemic, and therefore you have to pay. So this civil lawsuit has been tried. I don’t think it’s going to be very successful, especially since the idea that Tony Fauci or any virologist created the pandemic and caused the pandemic is itself not true. I don’t think these civil suits should go anywhere.

Navarro: I don’t think a pardon would prevent a class action suit against Fauci personally. He needs to be held accountable. I mean, think about it, Maria. The guy’s sitting in a mansion with millions of dollars and —

Wait — Tony Fauci, as a government employee... Now, I do realize he was a very high-up government employee, which I’d assume was the product of working at NIAID for almost fifty years. Eventually you get enough raises over that time, eventually your salary will be pretty high, and he did have a pretty important job. I actually don’t have a problem with Tony Fauci getting paid a lot. But I don’t think he’s sitting in a mansion with millions of dollars. Maybe? But is that even true? And also — where does Peter Navarro live? I’m pretty sure Peter Navarro is not living in some sort of efficiency apartment somewhere. Sitting in a mansion with millions of dollars. Look who’s talking, bud.

Navarro: And a lot of people in this country think this guy’s a hero. He was Dr. Frankenstein of the modern era.

Okay. Dr. Frankenstein was putting human body parts together in the Victorian era with electricity. I don’t think you suddenly become Frankenstein of the modern era by funding research into vaccines. But do go on, Peter Navarro — clearly you’re not familiar with the literature.

Navarro: This is indisputable fact right now. He created that virus using gain of function research. He did it for the express purpose — he thought it was like a good idea: let’s create —

Tony Fauci did not, quote, “create that virus” with gain of function research. There is no way that SARS-CoV-2 could have been created with the research Tony Fauci was funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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What that research actually was

Let’s be clear about what that research is. It was studying wild coronaviruses circulating in bats in China and in other parts of Southeast Asia — so also in Laos and Cambodia, I believe they were doing some sampling there.

In any case, there was a sub-award given on a grant. This is a common mechanism: if you get a grant and you have a collaborator on it, you pay for the research the collaborator is going to do with what’s called a sub-award. So a sub-award was given from the main grant — which went to EcoHealth Alliance — to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to find bat coronaviruses and evaluate whether or not they could pose a threat to humans.

One of the ways they did this was by going out and collecting samples from bats. Usually how you do this is you trap the bats using a net, and you take an anal swab and usually an oral swab too, depending on the bat. This is not what I do. I have done this once — maybe I’ll show you some videos of me not enjoying observing that work. I also went into a cave, and believe me, that was a zero out of ten experience for me. I have never so badly wanted to take off my PPE, because it was so fucking hot in there, and there were spores everywhere, and it was just so gross and humid, and there were apparently these whip scorpions, which I did not see — and fortunately, I did not see them. This is why I don’t like doing field work very much. I prefer to stay in the lab where it’s nice and safe and clean and there are no insects or creepy-crawlies or mud or spores in the air, and I can wear a nice comfortable PAPR and all of this.

So, I digress. But anyway — that’s what they were doing. They were going out and getting these bats, collecting genetic material from their anal and oral swabs, and taking them back to the lab to see if they could culture virus from them sometimes. But most of the time, I think they were just doing PCR on them to see if there were any coronaviruses in there. The way you do that is you design PCR primers — this tells the PCR test what to look for, something that will bind to a lot of different coronaviruses, so you can tell if one’s in there. Then you can sequence what you get out of it and see if you found a new virus. For some of these viruses they didn’t find a complete genome, but they found a lot of them. And for the ones where they did find a complete genome, or at least a complete spike protein, they would make what’s called a chimeric virus.

That might be what Navarro’s talking about with the Frankenstein stuff. Chimeric viruses are named after the Greek myth of the chimera, a monster made out of all sorts of different animal parts — a lion’s head and all this stuff. It’s just a bunch of different things all put together. So a chimeric virus is that, except with viruses. They take a normal SARS-related coronavirus — a virus that is either SARS-1 or related to SARS-1, a similar virus they’ve got cloned. (And this is another conversation, but cloning coronaviruses is very technically challenging, so people don’t just have a lot of these backbones lying around.) They put the spike protein in there, and then they infect cells or transgenic mice. Those are mice expressing the human receptor for SARS-related coronaviruses — the receptor for SARS-2, or COVID. It’s called ACE2.

They put those viruses into these mice and see if they get sick. Sometimes they get sick, sometimes they don’t. If they do get sick, you compare it to the wild-type virus — the backbone virus. And the backbone virus is very lethal. So if there’s death, if there’s mortality, the only time it’s a gain of function is if it’s more than the control, the original virus — not the chimera. In this case, it was actually a MERS-related coronavirus chimera, and they ended up still having a lot of lethality, but it was less lethal than wild type. So that’s actually a loss of function. It’s not gain of function. But in any case, that couldn’t have made SARS-2.

We’re getting into the weeds here, and that’s what these guys count on. They count on the fact that you don’t know there’s a huge diversity of coronaviruses out there. In order for SARS-CoV-2 to have been made in a lab by Tony Fauci — or by people funded by the institute he ran — you would have to have what’s called a progenitor virus. You have to have the virus that became SARS-CoV-2. So you either have to have that backbone I just described in a chimera, or you have to have something that would turn into it if you just passaged it enough under the right conditions. Let’s say you put it into a mouse, then into another mouse, and over time it got more lethal in mice because you’re passaging it through them, trying to select for that outcome. Viruses evolve very quickly, so you can do that — it’s called serial passage. It’s another favorite boogeyman of people like Peter Navarro, who, again, don’t understand this stuff themselves. They don’t care if it’s right. They don’t care if you understand it. The point is to say that Tony Fauci did something bad.

What I’m telling you is that the progenitor virus — the virus that would be required to make SARS-2, so proto-SARS-2 — would have to be in the lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It would have to be somewhere. We’d have to have seen it before. We’ve never found the progenitor virus in nature, in a freezer — we’ve never found it. So it’s out there somewhere, but it’s probably not in a lab, because all the rest of the data we have about the origins of the pandemic are not consistent with the virus coming from a lab. You can’t prove a negative — we can’t prove that nobody had this progenitor virus — but Tony Fauci didn’t have it. The Wuhan Institute of Virology didn’t have it. If they did have it, they would have published on it, just like they did with SARS-2. They were out there publishing from day one, because they were getting Nature papers. And in China, you actually get financially rewarded a lot for getting big, high-profile papers, because the Chinese government has made a huge investment in their scientific research infrastructure. Their national research program is going to defeat America’s now, because we’ve essentially just decided to let Trump destroy ours. So that’s another bad side effect of all of this.

But Peter Navarro has different ideas. He thinks that somehow Tony Fauci was in cahoots with China, and that’s why it’s “indisputable,” according to him, that he created this virus. Well, it’s quite disputable, because it’s simply not true. And Peter Navarro is a convicted felon with other motivations.

Navarro: We need the virus in case something happens in the future, so then we can create a vaccine, so if something happens in the future we can deal with it. I mean, how did that work out, Anthony, you idiot? You are, you are —

It actually worked out extremely well, because it was this type of research that allowed us to develop vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 and for MERS. That is, in fact, how we knew that the pre-fusion stabilized spike protein — which is what’s used in all SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, COVID vaccines — is the best antigen to use. It’s the best thing to show your immune system to make sure you have the most protective immunity from that vaccine. So yeah, actually, the work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did work out, Anthony. It worked out, Peter. It worked out pretty well, because all the work Tony Fauci funded — to people who have also been accused, by the way, alongside him of starting the pandemic — that work was the basis of Operation Warp Speed, ultimately, and of being able to get vaccines out that saved millions of American lives.

So how did that work out, Peter? As an economist, I’d think fewer Americans dying would be desirable. Usually that’s considered good for the economy. I don’t know — I’m not an economist. Just like you’re not a virologist, evidently.

Navarro: You need to come clean, Fauci. Fauci, you need to come clean, okay? Quit hiding behind your money and your laurels and your PBS documentaries. Come clean, because you killed people. All the kids that had to sit in their homes — my mom, I couldn’t see.

Okay, so Fauci killed people. And then all the people who had to sit in their homes — that’s who we killed with lockdowns. Which, by the way, weren’t his idea, and he did not implement them. That’s not even his job as director of NIAID — it’s not to enforce or even develop lockdowns. That happens at the CDC. So I don’t even know what you’re talking about, because we didn’t actually even have lockdowns. And I’m sorry that Peter Navarro is about to go into a big sob story about how his mom was alone, but, you know — tough shit. We didn’t do everything in the pandemic perfectly. But also, people didn’t die in huge numbers from lockdowns. They died from COVID. And to insinuate anything else — and to insinuate that it was Tony Fauci’s fault or idea — is just complete and total bullshit.

Navarro: See, my mom, where she was, she was holed up in her apartment, getting food under the door. I mean, it’s like a prison. Fauci did that.

You know where Peter Navarro’s mother’s apartment probably is? I’d imagine Park Avenue or something like that. Somehow, even though she was getting food delivered under the door, I doubt very much that it was, quote, “like prison.”

Navarro: Fauci did that, and the Chinese hit it too, okay? Let’s not forget the culpability of the Chinese Communist Party in this. They’re trying to drown us in a sea of virus if we dared say the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

That is honestly just my favorite part. They’ll drown us in a sea of virus if we ever say the virus came from the Wuhan lab. Have you been drowned in a sea of virus yet? I mean, it was a pandemic, so one could argue that’s what he’s metaphorically referring to, but... no. COVID was not a bioweapon, no matter what anybody says, no matter what kind of stupid ideas people come up with or mental gymnastics they’ve done to convince themselves that COVID was a bioweapon-slash-vaccine gone wrong. There’s just no evidence of that whatsoever.

I just think it’s hilarious that China is supposedly standing by, ready to unleash more COVID at us if we dare even say the words “lab leak.”

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Why China would actually want to cover up natural origin

Now let me tell you something else before we move on. China does not care if anybody thinks it was a lab leak. Here’s why.

The prevailing theory is that the lab leak, if it happened, was accidental. I think everybody — except for the craziest of people — has more or less ruled out the idea that it was intentional, that it was a bioweapon. There are still a few of these theories going around, but for the most part the official line seems to be that it was an accidental lab leak. Maybe an accidental lab leak of a bioweapon, but not an intentional release or attack.

And some of this stuff is just so funny, even though it’s so terrible, because — why would something like that even matter? Why would China worry about an accident? Okay, maybe it was a bioweapon and they don’t want anybody to find out. Like in Sverdlovsk in 1979, where there was a leak at a facility manufacturing weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union. That was a violation of the BWC. That was evidence of an offensive biological weapons program, and that’s pretty freaking clear, considering it was — again — weaponized anthrax. It was hard to investigate that one, because it was the Soviet Union and they weren’t eager to have an international team of investigators come in either, considering it actually was a biological weapon.

But COVID was not a biological weapon. SARS-2 would be the stupidest biological weapon of all time, and I don’t care what anybody says. I think the theory that it’s a neurocognitive bioweapon — meaning it would disrupt society by causing long COVID everywhere — is really, really a terribly dumb idea, because it still would be a terrible bioweapon. You can’t protect against it fully with the vaccine, or with the vaccine technologies we currently have. And it doesn’t affect soldiers — it only affects old people and sick people. For the most part. I know it doesn’t only affect those people, but at population scale, that’s who’s most at risk, and that’s not going to harm your fighting forces in the future, in the theater of battle.

So I just don’t understand why China would even care that it was a lab leak. I mean, they’d care in the sense that it would be kind of embarrassing — but you could rectify that, and China was actually working with the US, with France, with Western partners to shore up their biosafety and biosecurity operations. Now those good old days of collaborative working-together are over. But at the time, there’s no reason to think China would have necessarily wanted to cover up a lab leak more than they would have wanted to cover up how the pandemic actually started.

And I think that’s why the market was sanitized so early — so we weren’t able to take any samples from the live animals being sold there. As soon as that market was identified, those animals disappeared. There was a huge crackdown on live animals. Even through 2021, when the WHO sent its first mission there, Chinese officials were denying — and witnesses at the market were denying — that live animals were sold there. And it was very clear: we found documentary evidence that animals were being sold there. Eventually there was genetic evidence too.

The fact is, SARS-CoV-1 emerged under the exact same circumstances, and there were multiple epidemics or surges of SARS-CoV-1 — which had a much higher mortality rate than SARS-CoV-2. There were huge surges of SARS-CoV-1 because the markets remained open, because people were continuing to be around these live animals: purchasing them, working with them, selling them, handling them. So there was a lot of back-and-forth transmission. After that outbreak, people were so concerned SARS-1 was going to cause a pandemic that China said, “We’re cracking down on the live animal trade. We’re going to make sure that when this happens, it’s happening safely and in a regulated way.” It was banned for a while. And you know what? Then it wasn’t banned.

And it’s much more embarrassing on the global stage for China to have basically let the same thing happen all over again — what happened with SARS-1 — despite all the investment they’ve made, despite all the collaborations (which were because of SARS-1) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with their Western partners to really upgrade their science and be part of the international scientific community, out of concern that a pandemic could happen the next time a SARS-related coronavirus emerged. And guess what? It did. Under the exact same circumstances.

So what’s worse for China — accidental lab leak, or that? I think that’s much worse for China, which is why we continue to hear from China that their prevailing origin theories have to do with, oh, it’s seafood, it was brought to China from somewhere else: from Europe, from the US, from Australia, wherever. It was brought to China; it didn’t come from China. And we all know it came from China, because guess what? That’s where SARS-related coronaviruses come from. That’s where they circulate. That’s where the bats they circulate in live.

So that is the motivation for China to cover up the origins. It’s not to cover up a lab leak. It’s to cover up natural origin, because it really makes them look bad. And it should. The live animal trade and the conditions those animals are kept in is what’s making pandemics like this — this kind of zoonotic spillover — much more likely. And in this case, it caused a pandemic. So there you go.

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Housekeeping, and what’s coming next week

Okay — I had a whole bunch of other things, but we’re at thirty minutes already, so I’m just going to skip over those, and we can discuss all these other horrors next week.

There was a big drop of documents from CDC that I haven’t had a chance to go through yet. But from what I’ve seen so far, these are all from Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer, who quit along with her colleagues Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan after Susan Monarez was fired as CDC director by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — for refusing, basically, to go along with all of his different anti-vax ideas for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. They’re the ones who make vaccine recommendations at CDC. So, a whole lot to get into there. And, you know, vaccines are kind of my lane, because I’m the co-editor-in-chief of Vaccine and I’m just a vaccine-enthusiast kind of gal — vaccine researcher as well. So we’ll chat about that, I’m sure.

Maybe there’ll be some more information in the GLP-1 agonist mystery-patient story — the patient who is probably Donald Trump. My only question about that is: why was he taking this experimental one? Did Ozempic and Mounjaro not work for him? Because, again, I feel like he has bigger problems to worry about than just weight loss. His report said he had sleep apnea and all this stuff, which I have no doubt about — I’m sure he does. He sleeps all the time, and he does seem like he struggles to breathe occasionally. So I think we could all probably make that diagnosis at this point, even though none of us are supposed to. Anyhow, maybe there’ll be more news on that. So maybe we’ll talk about it on Monday.

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One more thing: tell OMB to keep its hands off your grants

Two more last pieces of housekeeping — how could I forget this? Every day until July 13th I’m going to be talking about it, because Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is going to try to steal more than a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and use it for further centralization of fascist power within the federal government, further erosion of democracy, and cutting off as many of your services as he possibly can — particularly if you live in a blue state that Trump doesn’t like and that won’t cooperate with the regime.

To stop that, what you need to do is leave a comment at this URL. If we’re on Instagram, it’s there at the top of the screen. Please comment and tell OMB how much you like having state block grants for the things they provide — like supplemental nutrition assistance, and roads, and electricity, and libraries, and schools, and hospitals, and police departments, and fire departments, and parks, and all kinds of rural services, and farm subsidies, and small business loans, and all kinds of things that make your life easier in your community that you probably don’t think about as being related to a grant from the federal government. But guess what? It is. And that’s what Russell Vought is trying to steal.

So Save America Movement (SAM) and I got together and made a little video, and Save America Movement also posted about it on their Substack. I’ll have those links for you. Please go check that out and learn more about how you can help in this situation and do your part. In this case it’s quite easy, because all you have to do is submit this comment. You can do it anonymously, but it’s better if you don’t.

Anyway — have a nice weekend, everybody. If you’re enjoying this, please do let me know what you think. I’m easy to find on all the various platforms, and I do actually read things even if I don’t respond. I’m bad at responding sometimes — my apologies — but I really do care a lot about making sure I’m getting accurate, useful information out and making you aware of these things I think are so important for everybody to know about. So if there’s a scientific topic I can help with, I’d love to do that for everybody who’s taking the time out of their day to watch.

And if you don’t already, please subscribe to my Substack — because I’m bad at asking for this, but I’ve been told I should encourage people to do so. It’s really true that things can get lost in the Substack algorithm, but if you subscribe to me, you’ll get a notification. And while these do sometimes get annoying — because I’m subscribed to a bunch of people and I get email from all of them — it really does remind me of their Substack, just in case it doesn’t show up in my feed, or I’m having a day where I’m not scrolling that much. It also reminds me of Substacks where the authors don’t post very frequently or on a regular schedule. So it’s really better to subscribe. I’d appreciate it if people who like this would please subscribe and recommend it to your friends, and let me know what I could do better.

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With that note — have a great weekend, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other. And take care of your mental health too, because I spend all of my time worrying about all of this stuff, and also worrying about the fact that I’m having these health problems on top of it, which really sucks. I spend a lot of time not feeling great. So I’ve made a point to take weekends where I can do nice stuff for myself that makes me feel great — spend time with my family, go get my nails done, just relax. Make sure you’re doing some of that stuff for yourself too. Just be kind to yourself, because these are really difficult times, and it’s hard sometimes to find joy in life and to find hope in things. I find that sometimes just taking a little bit of time to appreciate Angie is what I need to keep plugging along.

So on that note — have a great weekend, everybody, and take care.

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Links from this episode

• Aaron Rupar, Public Notice — https://www.publicnotice.co/

• OMB “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” — public comment portal (Docket OMB-2026-0034; comments close ~July 13, 2026) — https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001

• Federal Register text of the proposed rule — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

• , “Sometimes the Fascism Is in the Fine Print” — https://saveamericamovement.substack.com/p/the-bridge-wont-get-built

• Worobey et al. (2022), “The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Science — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

Thank you , , , , and many others for joining me! I’ll be back on Monday. One more piece of housekeeping: no Taking Shots this week, because was at the Aspen Ideas Festival! We’ll be back next week!

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Today we actually get to start with some semi-good news. It’s really good news, in fact, for Angelas everywhere. Forty-seven-year-old Angelas, rejoice: Angela Perryman has been released from Nebraska Hantavirus Quarantine Jail.

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An Angela Goes Free

For those of you who weren’t paying attention to this story — which was most people, but to my horror, since I am also a forty-seven-year-old woman named Angela who has gone toe to toe with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over some virology bullshit he made up — Angela Perryman was a passenger on the MV Hondias cruise ship who got stuck in the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha at RFK Jr.’s orders. Basically, she wanted to quarantine at home. The state of Florida said she didn’t actually need to be under twenty-four-hour supervision to make sure she wasn’t going to violate her quarantine. Kennedy said, well, too bad, you’re going to stay in quarantine jail until your six weeks are over. He essentially imprisoned a woman outside of the U.S. court system with just his signature, because he said she was a huge hantavirus transmission risk. And in doing so, he averted a hantavirus pandemic, or something. This was his tweet yesterday, patting himself on the back for keeping Americans safe from hantavirus.

Now, let me be very clear about something. Hantavirus is very bad if you get it. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome has something like a 30-percent-plus mortality rate. What happens is your blood vessels in your lungs lose barrier function, your lungs fill up with fluid, and you die from that. That’s actually a little different from the way you die from influenza pneumonia, because hantaviruses and influenza viruses — or COVID, for that matter — infect different types of cells.

Influenza and COVID, these typical respiratory viruses that are much more transmissible, infect the respiratory epithelial cells — the cells that line the airway. Hantaviruses can infect those cells, and this is something where there just hasn’t been a lot of research done, so we don’t fully know — there are big knowledge gaps here. But hantaviruses don’t seem to produce much virus in those cells. They’re not very efficient at replicating there. The cells they’re really good at replicating in are the microvascular endothelium — the cells that line the capillaries, the very tiny blood vessels throughout your lungs. They’re in the alveolar spaces, the air sacs at the terminal point of your airway, because that’s where blood gas exchange occurs. You breathe in oxygen, it gets into your blood through these capillaries, your blood is oxygenated, and you don’t suffocate to death. That’s how breathing works. And hantavirus infects the cells that line those blood vessels where gas exchange happens.

So it’s not that transmissible, in the sense that it’s probably not shedding a ton of hantavirus into the airway. It does shed some, and human-to-human transmission is possible, because that’s what happened on the cruise ship Angela Perryman was on. But it didn’t spread to everybody on the cruise ship, and they were on that ship together for quite a long time — which to me suggests it’s just like the older Andes virus outbreaks. This was a type of hantavirus called Andes virus, and Andes virus is the only hantavirus where human-to-human transmission has been reported. It happens in certain circumstances, but it doesn’t happen all the time, like with COVID and flu. That’s probably because people generally aren’t shedding a ton of infectious Andes virus when they’re just talking and feeling fine. They don’t seem to be contagious or capable of transmitting the virus at all until they become symptomatic.

So Kennedy did not actually protect America from dangerous airborne hantavirus, because it’s not really that transmissible by the airborne route. There’s no reason to think that if Angela Perryman had gone back to Florida and become symptomatic, she wouldn’t have been able to alert somebody, get isolated, and nobody else would have gotten hantavirus anyway. What Kennedy is doing here is patting himself on the back for illegally imprisoning a woman and stripping her of her constitutional and civil rights for six weeks, because she was politically opposed to his desire to do that. And that, to me, is really offensive.

Before we forget this story and move on, I want people to keep in mind: we’ve never had a Health and Human Services Secretary who decided to use his quarantine power to imprison Americans without due process of law. So take a look at how Angela Perryman characterized her own treatment in quarantine:

One word. How would you describe it? Prison. Solitary confinement. This is a prison.

The forty-seven-year-old Florida native is one of eighteen American passengers initially transported to the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, Nebraska, to begin isolating for the duration of the virus’s six-week incubation period, which is set to end June twenty-second. Last week, the CDC gave passengers the option of finishing quarantining at home.

When they told me I was here voluntarily, I believed them.

But Perryman, who has never tested positive or shown any symptoms, is stuck, saying her home state of Florida is pushing back on CDC requirements that states place law enforcement or public health workers outside the homes of those in quarantine and check their temperature twice a day in person.

Let me be clear about what the CDC — and by that I mean RFK Jr. — was demanding that Florida do. They were demanding that Florida station cops outside of Angela Perryman’s house. Angela Perryman, as this news story is showing, is into nature photography, has not committed any crimes in her life, and does not need police monitoring. She also agreed to subject herself to whatever home-monitoring requirements were necessary, including having her temperature taken twice a day. So they could have easily just sent people to take her temperature and call it a day. They didn’t have to send cops to literally sit outside her house twenty-four-seven to make sure she wasn’t trying to get out of that requirement. There is no reason for doing this. The only reason Kennedy is imposing this on Angela Perryman — and the state of Florida, actually — is because he wants to set the precedent that he can.

...from Florida’s Surgeon General, deeming those conditions not necessary. I’m caught in a —

I have to say, this is the first time I’ve ever agreed with Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo. His views on vaccination are abhorrent. But in this case, I agree with him that it’s absolutely not necessary to put cops outside this woman’s house.

...power struggle between the federal government and the state of Florida. And I’m being held hostage. The CDC confirms eight passengers have left so far, some going to New York, California, Arizona, and Oregon. Others, including Jake Rosemarin, who’s been posting on social media about life in isolation, opting to stay.

I’m afraid to leave this room until I know that I will not get sick. Everybody else that’s requested being transferred home has been transferred. I remain here.

NBC News has reached out to the CDC and the state of Florida about Perryman’s story. Neither has responded. It is worth noting the CDC previously threatened passengers with criminal charges if they left quarantine. Perryman’s hired an attorney and says she hopes to be able to get home before the six weeks are up.

Full disclosure: I have been in touch with Angela Perryman’s attorneys. They asked for advice from a variety of experts, and I was one of them, regarding what kind of risks she actually posed to the public. They were unsuccessful in getting her released before quarantine just expired — it ended on Tuesday, I think. So she was released, and now she’s back home in Florida, from what I understand.

I think that’s fantastic. I’m all for forty-seven-year-old Angelas being vindicated and going free and not being held in prison for dumb, made-up virology reasons. I strongly oppose that, as a fellow forty-seven-year-old Angela who’s also a virologist — and an American who values my constitutional and civil liberties.

But people aren’t talking about the fact that once again, our Health and Human Services Secretary just signed an order and had this woman imprisoned for no scientific reason whatsoever. I am the first person who wants to make sure that an emerging virus like Andes virus is not going to cause an epidemic, a pandemic, or even one unnecessary, preventable infection. In my opinion, all infections are unnecessary and preventable if we figure out the right way to do it. I’m not pro–Andes virus by any means. I’m not lax about the necessary quarantine measures. But what I am is pro–evidence-based risk analysis.

What was just done here is that Kennedy made up some vague bullshit, waved his hands about the possibility of scary airborne hantavirus transmission — it’s a respiratory virus, it could cause a pandemic, high mortality rate — never mentioning that it’s not actually that transmissible and has never caused an epidemic outside of very specific circumstances. There was no scientific basis for this. The Health Secretary ordered this woman confined under armed guard, where she couldn’t just leave without fear of being prosecuted for it. That sets a terrible precedent. In a democracy, we are not supposed to have members of the president’s cabinet ordering people arrested because they don’t like where they’re standing politically. And that’s exactly what happened.

Here’s the guy defending Kennedy:

We can’t have Ebola in the U.S. We can’t have hantavirus spreading here. We don’t have any disease in the U.S. because we’re making America healthy again. And everybody knows that healthy people don’t get sick.

So we’re going to make sure none of these infectious diseases ever get here, so we don’t have to find out whether that hypothesis is true. Spoiler alert: it’s not. You will get sick, even if you’re young and healthy, if you’re infected with a pathogenic virus. Sure, some hosts won’t. But what if you’re the unlucky one who does get really, really sick? How are you going to be then, when we have no functioning public health system and a Health and Human Services Secretary who’s more interested in locking people up over things they made up than dealing with the infectious diseases that actually threaten us — namely influenza, COVID, highly pathogenic bird flu, which has the potential to cause a pandemic, Mpox virus, which has been imported numerous times, and Ebola virus. Not in the U.S., but in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it’s causing an outbreak right now that is going to become the biggest Ebola outbreak ever. And just because it’s a different ebolavirus — Bundibugyo virus instead of Ebola virus — it still causes Ebola. It is still an orthoebolavirus. It’s still killing. It’s going to kill thousands of people. As of now, it’s killed nearly three hundred confirmed deaths, infected more than a thousand, and we’re only doing contact tracing for about fifty percent of these.

So we are in real trouble when it comes to emerging viruses, because once again our Health Secretary is more interested in flexing power he doesn’t actually have — imprisoning people outside the court system, extrajudicially — because they are his political enemies. This is stuff that happens in dictatorships. So I really need everybody to pay attention to the fact that that’s what happened to Angela Perryman. Thank God she’s free. But what happens when it’s something else? What happens when it’s something more people are exposed to, and they can effectively imprison people on something they made up — and it’s sciency, so I’m sure they’re right, he’s in charge of science and whatever, boring. This is really serious stuff. We cannot allow people to be imprisoned over made-up virology, especially considering Fauci — and probably some of my other colleagues, too — are risking prison right now for completely made-up stuff about virology. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

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The USAID Biolabs Nonsense Again

There’s been a flurry of activity on these new “revelations” about USAID that have come from the gift that keeps on giving: Tulsi Gabbard’s declassified documents, which she released on her way out the door from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In addition to all the Fauci files — in which there’s email evidence that Tony Fauci was convinced by, basically, our papers, and isn’t convinced by all the lab-leak conspiracy theory bullshit, and told people that, because that was kind of his job — she dropped all this evidence that is well-known Russian propaganda. It says, oh, the U.S. was investing in all these foreign bio labs through the Department of Defense and DARPA and DTRA and all these scary-sounding programs. I bet they were making bioweapons, because they also had one of these bio labs in Ukraine. And guess what? They sequenced highly pathogenic avian influenza. Oh, my God, it sounds like they were making bioweapons.

Guess what? Sequencing viruses spreading in your poultry population and causing a huge economic problem — because you, Ukraine, are the sixth-largest exporter of poultry products in the world — is exactly what you do. You do genomic surveillance of highly pathogenic avian influenza that has a market effect on your poultry industry. For those of you who haven’t been following the ongoing panzootic that has killed millions of chickens and turkeys around the world since 2021, when it started spreading in animals: you sequence these viruses so you can see which ones are causing poultry outbreaks, which ones are spreading, and whether they’ve acquired mutations that might let them infect humans better — because H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza is a potential pandemic virus. It’s really important to make sure it hasn’t continued that journey toward becoming a pandemic virus by mutating. So you sequence the genomes of these viruses as they emerge and cause outbreaks in your poultry, like Ukraine, it sounds like, did as part of this program.

Now, the reason the U.S. started these bio labs in other countries — it actually happened a long time ago, decades ago, and it was a Cold War thing. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. was concerned that the Soviet bioweapons programs, which did exist — they were violating the BWC, the Biological Weapons Convention, making offensive biological weapons — the U.S. was concerned that some of these viruses and pathogens in their freezers would be sold to, or acquired by, actual terrorists. So the U.S. put more of these bio labs in places like Ukraine, so that as these newly independent countries developed, they’d be working with U.S. scientists, they’d be trained, and they’d be able to operate laboratories up to standard in terms of biosafety and biosecurity. The U.S. would also be able to keep tabs on them by collaborating with them.

It also enhances diplomacy. It’s a good example of soft diplomacy — we’re helping out other countries and therefore building goodwill, which is really important in geopolitics. I’m not an expert in that area, but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s easier to get along with your friends than with your enemies or adversaries. So we invested in a lot of these countries, in these bio labs, to make the U.S. safer, to improve the U.S.’s standing, to have influence over their scientists, to make sure they weren’t going to sell biological weapons to terrorist groups or make their own bioweapons. And this was not just Ukraine — it was countries all over the world.

The U.S. used to have a policy where we invested in other countries. We gave foreign aid. We sometimes lent our expertise as our foreign aid, thinking it would enhance relationships, improve scientific innovation, improve collaboration. And guess what — it did, until this administration came along and ruined all of it.

So the propaganda about what USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, actually did continues to be dragged through the mud, so that the administration doesn’t have to answer for the DOGE-induced murder of USAID. We’re seeing the impacts now, as more and more studies are coming out showing the cuts to USAID are literally costing lives we can quantify — lives that have ended because there’s no more HIV treatment available, thanks to the cancellation of USAID programs as well as PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program that cost the U.S. taxpayer very little but saved millions of lives from HIV and prevented millions of new infections. All of that is gone, and it’s starting to be quantified. We’re getting a body count. The Trump administration would like you not to pay attention to that, because they want you to think this had no effect whatsoever and made America so strong and powerful on the world stage — because we’re not involved anymore in this woke-ass multilateralism. Now we just do this bilateral shakedown thing, where we extort individual countries as needed and continue to promote American dictatorship.

As part of all this, new information has come out of Tulsi’s bio-labs dump — which, again, is well-known Russian propaganda, straight out of the Kremlin. Here we have Mike Benz saying USAID funded terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and ISIS and all these Middle Eastern terrorists — just because Joe Biden said it. This is Mike Benz, who was the national cybersecurity intelligence guy for like two seconds, on the strength of dumb tweets like this. Basically totally unqualified, just a complete clown. He wishes he were competent enough to be considered a kakistocrat. He didn’t last long, but he’s still “Real Mike Benz Cyber” or whatever.

Then here comes Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie. Katie has a podcast, and previously on it she’s said things like that her kids aren’t fully vaccinated, and that she hopes her kids eat dirt because that’s just as good as a vaccine. I guess she’s never heard about infant tetanus or the benefits of tetanus vaccination — except, wait, she has. Because I found out today, while preparing for this, that Katie Miller actually used the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the vaccine court, to get nearly eighty thousand dollars in compensation for what she claims is a shoulder injury from her last Tdap booster — the tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis vaccine. I’d think she just had some shoulder soreness and needed physical therapy for it. It doesn’t sound like her arm is out of commission — she’s gesturing all over the place doing a podcast all the time, and her shoulder looks fine. Although I’m not a doctor and I’m not a judge, so perhaps she was seriously injured. In any case, she got a nearly eighty-thousand-dollar payout from the VICP — the special master of the court awarded it to her for her vaccine injury. So she does know about the tetanus vaccine. And she has nonetheless said her children aren’t getting any vaccines, risking their lives with a bunch of preventable diseases.

She’s also coming through with these hot takes about USAID and the Ukraine stuff. It’s not surprising to me that these people are all retelling tired old Russian propaganda lines about these bio labs, and that it all comes back to Joe Biden. So Ukraine got money for these clean-energy labs and bio labs and all the science stuff — we don’t really know what it was, but it’s science, so it must be sketchy — and what they were actually doing was acting as a front organization to funnel money to the Biden campaign in 2024. Sorry — 2020. I can’t do math today. She says USAID funds were laundered through this foreign-aid scheme, through Ukraine, possibly through Ukrainian terror groups, who were executing their terror scheme by donating to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and helping to steal the election — which is also the big lie. The 2020 election was not stolen. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost.

So this USAID stuff keeps going back to the same old big lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, which he did not. This Orwellian remodeling of history — revisionist history, throwing everything that really happened into the memory hole and creating a new history — is exactly what Katie Miller is doing here. I would just implore you not to take seriously a woman who, first of all, fucks Stephen Miller regularly and has had multiple children with him, but also doesn’t vaccinate and has YOLO tattooed on the inside of her lower lip. I find all of that to be extremely questionable judgment.

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Nic Hulscher and the Gain-of-Function Grift

We’re continuing to hear this kind of crap from people who keep spreading this propaganda. So I actually want to feature another one of these people, because I think it’s good for some of them to be on everybody’s radar.

...the [unclear] constitutional [pardon] needs to be terminated and criminal prosecutions should commence, because we now have verified evidence. Tulsi Gabbard recently did declassify documents proving that he did in fact oversee the funding of gain-of-function activities in Wuhan...

Okay, so this is Nic Hulscher, MPH. He has a master’s in public health he got like a year or two ago. He’s the head epidemiologist, or something, at the McCullough Foundation. Now, the McCullough Foundation — or Institute, or whatever they call it — sounds like maybe it’s a legit scientific place, right? No. It’s a hellhole of anti-vax ivermectin grifters. And Nic Hulscher is basically their chief spokesperson, next to Peter McCullough, who it’s named after, who founded it, and who’s making the most of the money. He’s at the peak of the MLM pyramid on this one. Nic Hulscher is an early adopter, though — he’s got a pretty big downline, I’d imagine.

Every time something happens with vaccines, with lab-leak stuff, with whatever, they trot him out. In this case it looks like he’s on Newsmax, with Dr. Drew, I think, to talk shit about Fauci and act like he knows remotely what he’s talking about, despite the fact that — it’s like if you prompted an older AI video-generation model with “put an incel in a public communications position as a spokesperson for fascism,” and Nic Hulscher is what would result. So he’s out here, in his completely ridiculous cartoon-character voice, talking about gain-of-function activities. And he’s another one where I’d like to know what he thinks those gain-of-function activities are.

Because there was nothing that occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that would have violated U.S. rules at the time. That was called the P3CO — the Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight Framework — which Fauci helped develop and oversee. It specified that for work to be considered enhanced PPP — what they called gain of function — it had to make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic in a human. This was a problematic framework for many reasons, one being that you couldn’t actually tell if something was going to be more transmissible or pathogenic in a human unless it got into humans — and the whole point of the framework is for that not to happen. So there were some issues with this way of doing it. But the point is that Fauci did not approve anything that would have been forbidden by P3CO, the standard he was held to at the time.

So let’s get that out of the way. That’s the procedural thing — it’s boring, but it’s true. Nic Hulscher has no idea what “gain-of-function activities” are. He’s just using a term that’s now going to be associated with criminal activity. What Fauci was doing was funding work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — and through other R01 subawards all over the world — to do important infectious-disease work. The Wuhan Institute of Virology work was just a tiny drop in the bucket of NIAID’s entire budget. That’s what Fauci was funding people to do. That was literally his job as the Institute Director for NIAID. And I doubt very much that, prior to the pandemic, Fauci was spending much time at all thinking about this Wuhan Institute of Virology subaward, much less any gain-of-function activities.

Let’s finish listening to what he has to say, because it’s really fucking stupid.

...Wuhan, funneling millions of taxpayer dollars to that laboratory, that resulted in a human-made pandemic.

A human-made pandemic. Funneling millions of taxpayer dollars is a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, over years it did turn out to be more than one million dollars. But the subawards were quite small — a hundred thousand dollars a year or something like that. They were collecting viruses, and they were getting paid separately at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, through China. The U.S. did not pay their salaries. That’s not how subawards work. Subawards go to pay for research specifically that somebody is going to do to help whoever has the main grant. The person who gets the grant is the principal investigator, the PI, at whatever institution. In this case it was EcoHealth Alliance in New York, run by the PI himself, Peter Daszak. His institution issues a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and there’s a PI for the subaward as well. In this case that was Zhengli Shi. Dr. Shi is a bat coronavirologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and her role in this grant was to find new bat coronaviruses to assess whether they posed a threat to humans.

So that’s why they went out and found viruses and brought them back to the lab and did some stuff with them. The stuff they were doing was trying to figure out if the spike proteins from those viruses could use human ACE2, or another human receptor, to enter cells and cause an infection. That’s to determine if we even need to worry about them. If they don’t infect human cells, then we don’t need to worry about that virus, because it’s not going to infect people in the first place. But if one of these viruses can infect people, then you move on to: okay, it infects people — does it cause disease in people? Will it make people sick? Is there potential for it to be transmitted easily? That’s why you have to do these gain-of-function activities — to assess whether you should keep worrying about this virus and whether you should devote resources to making countermeasures against it.

Let’s finish up. Nic is almost done here.

...that killed millions, while at the same time sending emails to colleagues telling them to delete this email after you read it. That’s destruction of records. David Morens, his top advisor, was arrested a few months ago for the same thing.

Okay, I was a witness to that crime, because I did get one of David Morens’s “delete this” emails. Actually, it was not “delete this.” It was “use David Morens’s Gmail instead,” because we were about to start talking shit about some of our colleagues who we think are lab leakers and we don’t respect that, and we didn’t want it ending up on the news because it’d be embarrassing. That’s what David Morens’s crime was. I’m not saying it was legal or right — he shouldn’t have tried to evade public-records laws. But that was the motivation: so we could talk shit privately about some of our academic colleagues who we disagreed with. And that was the case for the other emails David Morens sent urging colleagues to use his Gmail instead of his NIAID email address.

This is being played out like it was, oh, well, we’re about to do something extremely shady — we’re about to cover up a pandemic that killed twenty million people, so use David’s Gmail, guys. Give us some credit here. If we were really trying to do that, I don’t think we’d have been that stupid. We wouldn’t have used David Morens’s NIAID email address to begin with. And read the content of the emails — David and Peter Daszak were basically just bitching to some of their friends and colleagues. We’re all virologists for the most part, we’re all scientists, we have opinions, and we’re literally colleagues — who are also friends — talking in that context to each other. Not trying to cover something up, but having a private conversation between friends. We weren’t thinking about anything like that, because it didn’t happen. This is people like Nic Hulscher coming through and producing this misleading, lying content all day, every day.

...you have probable cause for a crime, such as perjury or destruction of records or conspiracy against the United States, that would...

Oh — perjury, destruction of records, or conspiracy against the United States. He’s literally accusing Fauci of treason based on him emailing people. I think Kristian Andersen’s Proximal Origin paper is pretty good, and I agree with it — I agree with the evidence showing the pandemic started at the market and not a lab leak, because there is no lab-leak evidence. And this is being painted as a conspiracy against the U.S.? Are you kidding me, dude?

...usually be grounds for an arrest warrant against a common citizen. But he does have that auto-pen pardon, so that does need to be revoked.

Okay. Well, I’m very glad this brain trust is working on that auto-pen pardon revocation. The only reason Fauci needed that auto-pen pardon is because Biden anticipated they were going to do this exact sort of thing to Fauci, and probably also to his family members. And indeed, Hunter Biden has been accused of being involved in these bio labs, because at one point he invested in one of the government contractors that was also helping to run some of them. This is such unbelievably stupid shit — that the Biden “crime family” is somehow engaging in the dumbest conspiracy ever, which obviously did not work, to keep Joe Biden in authoritarian power by grabbing control of everything through exploitation of medical information and public health laws. I don’t remember Joe Biden doing that. But it sure seems like a lot of that’s going on right now. And it’s because of people like Nic Hulscher. So I’m going to be talking about some of these people every day, just so you can get to know all of them.

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Ebola in France (and the Catastrophe in the DRC)

There’s just one more thing. I don’t even have a graphic about it, but there’s a French doctor coming back from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from responding to the Ebola outbreak there, who now has Ebola and is in France.

Guess what? There’s not going to be a big Ebola outbreak in France. Do you know why? Because they have P4 containment facilities that are appropriately built out for managing patients with Ebola virus, or other highly pathogenic, potentially really bad pathogens. They can be treated in these facilities and receive the best medical care possible. They can also be isolated from everybody else, so there’s no onward transmission to health care workers — which is always a big risk for Ebola — and no onward transmission to the community at large.

It’s really important for people to pay attention to that, because the headlines I see are “first Ebola case in France,” and everybody freaks out — probably because a white person has it again. Nobody is paying attention to the fact that the situation in the DRC is absolutely horrific. I truly can’t believe the news coming out of there every day. There’s still not enough PPE. There’s not enough testing supplies. There’s tons and tons of violence. The virus has gotten into communities that are already incredibly vulnerable, already incredibly distrustful of foreign aid and humanitarian aid — for very, very good reason. It’s essentially a civil-war zone. People from any government have not always shown up and helped everybody, including foreign governments. If you want to look up some really shitty colonial history, look up King Leopold II of Belgium and see what happened in the Belgian Congo, which is what the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo were called before becoming independent countries.

So there’s been a lot of really bad stuff happening in the outbreak zone. But I really hope this French doctor recovers, because what they were doing was so important. They were helping respond to the Ebola outbreak, which, again, is going to be the biggest Ebola outbreak that’s ever happened. It’s going to have the biggest death toll. It’s going to be an absolute humanitarian disaster. Going there, helping with that — that’s wonderful. And it’s terrible that they’ve gotten Ebola. But I implore people not to care only when a white person from Europe or North America gets it. It’s not likely to spread in France. It’s still not a risk to people in Western Europe, in the U.S., in wealthier countries. It’s catastrophic for people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So I really implore people to think about that when they’re thinking about things like, oh, should I believe this conspiracy theory about USAID? One of the reasons this Bundibugyo outbreak is so bad is because of the lost resources from USAID. All of these things we never really paid much attention to in the U.S. — that we never needed to pay attention to — have dire, dire life-or-death consequences elsewhere in the world. And they eventually will have these life-or-death consequences for us, too. And they are having life-or-death consequences for our democracy. Absolutely.

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Comment on Russell Vought’s Money Grab

As we go on to America’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday, we can think about how America lived to be two hundred and fifty years old, and that’s it.

So on that cheerful note, I’m going to remind everybody: check out the link. I’ve had it up here for the entire episode, and I’m going to keep it up until July thirteenth, which is the last day you can comment to the Office of Management and Budget about OMB Director Russell Vought’s terrible, terrible plan to seize control of more than a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and use it to finish the job Donald Trump and all his dumb cronies have started — driving a stake into the heart of American democracy.

I’m going to comment and say how much I like things like roads, and state parks, and a police force, and a fire department, and emergency responses, and schools, and hospitals, and — oh, I don’t know — electricity. All the things we don’t think about because we’ve always had them are potentially going to be taken away, or used as leverage to get Democrats to cooperate with the fascists in power. We cannot allow that to happen. So we need to comment, from the bottom of our hearts, about all the services we’re going to miss if Russell Vought steals all our money. Please go to this link and do that before July, because it will be really important — should Russell Vought try to push this forward — in getting it overturned by the courts. The more of us who complain about it, the harder it is to say nobody cares or everybody supports it.

On that note, I really am going to sign off and say goodbye. I’ve got a lot of work to do today. So take care of yourselves. I’ll see you tomorrow, same time, one p.m. Eastern. Happy Thursday.

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Links from this episode

• USAID funding cuts and projected mortality (Lancet modelling study) — https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

• PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) — https://www.state.gov/pepfar/

• National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), HRSA — https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation

• HHS P3CO Framework (Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight) — https://aspr.hhs.gov/S3/Pages/Enhanced-Potential-Pandemic-Pathogen-Oversight-Framework.aspx

• Andersen et al., “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Nature Medicine (2020) — https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

• WHO — Ebola outbreak, DRC 2026 (Bundibugyo virus) — https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/ebola-outbreak---drc-2026

• OMB proposed rule, “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” (Federal Register, docket OMB–2026–0034) — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

• Public comment portal (comment by July 13) — https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001

Thank you , , , , , and many others for joining me! Join me tomorrow at 1 pm ET.

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I DGOF: Explaining Gain-of-Function Research

Hi there, everybody. I’m Angie Rasmussen.

I decided to have theme music today. It’s the Soviet National Anthem, because effectively, I feel like that’s what we should be listening to. I really like the Soviet National Anthem. Actually, I kind of miss it. Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, it was always great to see the Soviets at the Olympics. They always seemed so sinister, and they were such good bad guys to be against.

So anyways, my husband grew up in the Soviet Union, and he translated the lyrics for me one time. And it’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s all kinds of stuff about the glory of Leninist-Marxist thought and theory and practice and collective farming and all that stuff.

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Why the Soviet anthem: Lysenko, Vavilov, and Stalin

I thought it was pretty fitting, given that the Soviet Union was in large part ruined — by the time my husband came around — by Joseph Stalin. And a big part of that was due to the impact Stalin had on science, and the way he centralized power in the Soviet Union.

One of those ways was by working with this dude named Trofim Lysenko, who basically came up with all this made-up bullshit about seeds. He claimed he could turn one type of plant into another. Mostly his idea was, like, if we refrigerate seeds, they’re going to grow all over Russia — which turned out not to be very true, or true at all.

The guy who was sort of his academic competitor was this dude named Nikolai Vavilov. And Vavilov came up with a plan for Stalin to address the huge food shortages that would be created by forcing everybody to join a collective farm and the move to collective farming across the country. Since Vavilov was a plant geneticist and a botanist — I don’t even know what they called it in the Soviet Union, but he was like a plant geneticist — he came up with a plan to breed hardier plants that would have a longer growing season and would be good to grow in more places in the Soviet Union. But it would take ten years.

And Stalin didn’t have time to wait, because he really wanted to get collectivism moving — that was key to centralizing power within the Soviet government. There were still splinter groups around who were into, like, Leon Trotsky. So Stalin wanted to get rid of all the dissenters and consolidate power within himself. So he got together with Lysenko. Lysenko was like, this dude Vavilov is taking forever, his plan is going to take ten freaking years. I can just refrigerate these seeds, and we’re going to be eating oranges in Siberia. I can’t wait. It’s going to be awesome.

And of course, that never happened. And Stalin didn’t really care, because he didn’t need it to. All he needed was to remove people like Nikolai Vavilov, who were actually going to use evidence to make decisions, going to use the scientific method. And so what happened to Vavilov was, he was accused of spying for the Americans or the British — I can’t remember which. He ended up being tortured in a gulag and died, was starved to death, essentially in prison after his execution was overturned. I can’t remember why it was overturned, but basically he was a geneticist who put forward a plan that would work, and for his trouble, he died after being tortured and starved in prison and in gulags.

So that’s what the Soviet Union was like, and that’s how science was used to further Stalinism and move Stalinism forward. And that’s why I thought it was a fitting theme song, now that we’re heading into America’s 250th year of being a fabulous, functioning democracy — because it’s probably going to be the last, at least that we’re a democracy on paper.

We’re doing exactly some of the same stuff that happened, except instead of Nikolai Vavilov being targeted, right now it’s Tony Fauci.

Now, in Soviet times, after Vavilov was targeted, that was pretty much putting away everybody who was a so-called Mendelist or Morganist — somebody who believed in genetics, Mendelian genetics, which is that traits are inherited and passed down. Lysenko was what we call a Lamarckist. He followed the beliefs of Lamarck, that the things you pass down to your children are not inherited, that they’re shaped by your environment. Now, that does actually turn out to be true for some things, like epigenetics. But genetically, the basis for heritability is our genes. So Mendel was right. The Mendelists were right — but they were politically wrong in Soviet times.

And that’s what’s happened, unfortunately, to Tony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. Fauci ran NIAID for fifty years or something like that. He worked under both administrations. He was well regarded — in fact, lauded — for his entire career. And for his trouble, because unfortunately for him he was the director of NIAID and was relied upon, because of his excellent track record, to provide advice in times of trouble that have to do with infectious diseases (a pandemic qualifies)...

...because extremist far-right people have radicalized and divided our conversations about science and public health. The anti-science lobby, essentially. Certainly they’re a big part of the Republican Party’s politics right now, but they’re actually separate from that. They are interests that want to push anything that has to do with science or public health as incredibly divisive — we have to fight about it, we can’t settle it with evidence, we settle it by debate, and expertise is unwelcome in these conversations. Because expertise would bring expertise, but experts have a way of telling people who are full of shit that they are in fact full of shit, and they are experts while doing it. Hence why I have a lot of big fans.

Anyways, this was a thing that happened in Stalin’s time with Lysenko. And it’s a thing that’s unfortunately happening now. And the person being targeted for it is, in fact, Tony Fauci.

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Movie day

So I didn’t really want to do this, where we’re just going to watch a bunch of videos. But we are going to have a little movie day, because there has been no shortage of these annoying, obnoxious men basically calling for Tony Fauci’s prosecution nonstop on my Twitter feed. Every time I get onto the site now, you can tell what I use that website for, because the algorithm is serving me, like, here comes Rob Schneider — you know, Deuce Bigalow — who’s a wild anti-vaxxer. Here comes a Children’s Health Defense video — that’s the anti-vax organization RFK Jr. founded. Here comes Robert Malone, one of the craziest of all the anti-vaxxers in this whole group. Here come all of these people, and now here come all of these senators.

[Sen. Ron Johnson]: What you want a trial for is to have the discovery and get people under oath. I mean, personally, I doubt Fauci would testify in his own defense, because he’d either have to perjure himself or self-incriminate. He probably wouldn’t do that, so he’d probably take the Fifth all the time. But accountability starts with exposure. And exposure needs to occur across the media. It can’t just be confined to outlets like Newsmax and others who actually cover this. You need the legacy media to turn this into a story. Because until they do, it’s just not news.

Okay, so complaining that it’s too bad that only Newsmax — this crazy station I’m on right now; it’s not even a station, it’s like a website — only Newsmax will cover this story. A lot of people have been complaining about that, that the mainstream media isn’t covering this story.

And the story, by the way, is that Tulsi Gabbard, on her way out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, dropped all these documents that supposedly show proof of Tony Fauci running this sort of shadowy network of bio labs — like bioweapons-making people in other countries, including China. And he gave an R01 sub-award to Zhengli Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and she worked with a bunch of NIAID-funded US people to make COVID. And the reason they did is because, for some reason, Tony Fauci was in with the military, and biodefense stuff is just so profitable. Because, according to these guys, there are so many of these biodefense companies around that go find viruses, juice them up, make vaccines to them, and then get rich selling them back to the government and big pharma.

So that doesn’t happen. If that happened, there would probably be a lot more virologists — it would be a lot more profitable to be in this line of work.

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What gain-of-function research actually is

But yeah, we don’t actually invent viruses to make vaccines for. Sometimes we make viruses — chimeric viruses, for example, that you’re going to hear a lot about today. These are viruses where they’ve taken one virus, taken out a gene from it, and replaced it with a gene from another virus. We make vaccines this way, too. The Ebola vaccine, for example, is a chimeric virus made by taking vesicular stomatitis virus and taking out G — that’s its equivalent of spike, sorry, the G protein — and putting in GP from Ebola. That’s also Ebola’s equivalent of spike. That’s what your immune system responds to. So that’s a chimeric virus.

Sometimes, when people do this with coronaviruses — and what they were doing at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — is putting the spike protein from these bat coronaviruses that they found while looking for viruses into the backbone of another coronavirus, another SARS-related coronavirus. They had several that they had cloned and could do this with. And then they would look and see whether or not that virus could infect cells that expressed the human receptor for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. So if this chimeric virus could use that human receptor to get inside the cell and infect it, that means that particular virus, with that spike protein, might be a bigger risk for causing an epidemic or even a pandemic in people. It’s just one step we take to actually try to characterize some of these viruses and understand better which of them present a risk to us and which don’t.

Now, sometimes, if that spike protein enhances the ability of the virus to cause disease or to infect some kind of model organism — whether it be cells, mice, non-human primates, what have you — then that’s referred to as a gain of function. So I just want you to think about that while we’re talking about this. A gain of function is research that, in this context, makes a virus more transmissible or more pathogenic — meaning it makes disease more severe. So just keep that in mind, because you’re going to be hearing a whole lot about gain-of-function research from these dudes, and none of it’s true.

And by the way, Ron Johnson, who just did that little video — Ron Johnson has been all over the mainstream legacy media that he’s complaining doesn’t cover this stuff, talking about how vaccines cause turbo cancer and SIDS, and there’s an epidemic of vaccine injury from mRNA vaccines. He had a whole panel on the Senate Appropriations Committee with all his favorite anti-vax experts on turbo cancer, about how vaccines cause turbo cancer — when they don’t cause turbo cancer, or any other kind of cancer at all, as far as we are aware, especially not the mRNA vaccines. So Ron Johnson: not very credible. Spoke at the Children’s Health Defense conference last year. Again, Children’s Health Defense, big anti-vax organization. So Ron Johnson may not be the most credible person when he’s talking about whether or not Tony Fauci has a successful track record.

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Tommy Tuberville is dumb

So let’s go now to former Division One college football coach and current governor candidate for Alabama, Senator Tommy Tuberville.

[Sen. Tommy Tuberville]: Let’s go back to Obama. The thing that Tulsi Gabbard said about Obama after he started his reign, and going into all the things he did with illegal migration, things that went on in Iran, and then if you turn around what he did in the Russia collusion — there are so many people that have broken the law. [...] Look at the thousands of people that he actually let die because of his lies on a state level. So let’s go after him on the state level. You can’t get a pardon for that. He’s a crook. Obama’s a crook. All these people broke the law. Let’s put them in jail.

Okay, well, that’s not true either. So Tony Fauci is not, in fact, a crook. Tony Fauci did not lie to the Senate.

Now, what I think Tommy Tuberville — and it’s hard to say, because Tommy Tuberville is not the sharpest scholar in the academy, that’s for sure, despite the fact that I’m sure he did have a university faculty position at some point, because they usually give some sort of faculty status to the college coaches. So perhaps I could call Tommy Tuberville my former colleague, as a fellow academic. But in any case, Tommy Tuberville was never impressing anybody with his astonishing intellectual discourse at any point in his life, I doubt. So I don’t really take him very seriously with this legal interpretation of what Tony Fauci did or did not do. But I will say that Tommy Tuberville is completely incorrect that Tony Fauci committed a crime at the state, federal, or any other level, because he certainly did not.

Now, Fauci did testify in front of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the Senate. He testified in front of them multiple times, because he’s the NIAID director. Often they’ll ask NIH directors and NIH IC directors like Tony Fauci to come give them an update about how things are going with the money they’ve appropriated for high-priority research for the American people. So Fauci talked to them a lot. And unfortunately, one of the things Rand Paul likes to talk about on the HELP committee — because he’s on that too — is the lab leak, and how Tony Fauci caused it.

Now, Fauci denied causing it, and in fact said that Rand Paul was not the one telling the truth — that Rand Paul was in fact lying, and Rand Paul didn’t understand what he was talking about. As somebody who is an expert in this topic, who literally has a PhD in this topic, who has written papers on this topic in some top science journals, I can say that, in fact, having watched that clip many times, Rand Paul does not know what he’s talking about. And Tony Fauci was, in fact, not lying about the origins of the pandemic, and specifically what the evidence shows about it. Unfortunately, we are in a situation now where the evidence doesn’t really matter anymore. And that’s what concerns me so very much.

Rand Paul is a

So, okay, we’ve still got more action and more celebrities to watch today. Let’s move on to the man himself, who is going after Fauci with a vengeance. And that would be Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: Connect the dots between what’s been going on and what happened. That would have been very bad for him. And it is bad. Now he’s pardoned, and he’s got pardon going forward, pardon going backward. I don’t know whether those stand up, but — two years ago, David Sacks, I’m sure you know him, he said this explains exactly how he orchestrated the pandemic, or at least knew about gain-of-function research and then changed the story. And I tweeted at the time, what? Can someone explain to me why Dems line up to defend this guy? Can you explain why Democrats have lined up to defend Fauci when it was clear as the nose on your face what had happened? I think he represents a big brother in public health. The big brother that tells you what to do, doesn’t give you advice but commands you. And the left really is fine with an authoritarian approach to medicine.

We love authoritarianism. That’s why I’m right here right now.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: ...the degree of how much this dishonesty was. He knew in January that there were cases that did not come from the market — you know, the wet market with the exotic animals. He already knew that, and he was admitting it in private.

Now I can address this to Rand Paul, because this is one point he has perpetually refused to understand. And that is that there were many cases early on. Most of them were located geographically close to the wet market in Wuhan, China, where we think the pandemic did actually start. Many of those cases were associated with people who’d gone to the market — because guess what, we knew there were a lot of cases associated with the market, so they did an epi investigation on it. China did. And we know about some of that stuff.

There were also people who went to the hospital — who went to seek treatment for COVID — who had not been to the market. And this is what we found, my group of people, the Zoonati, as we were investigating this: we found that those people who hadn’t been to the market lived right by the market. That was one of the big pieces of evidence, actually, for the market. The fact that these people had not been to the market, but they lived right by the market. That’s probably how they got exposed to COVID — from somebody who had been at the market and lived in their neighborhood, or was walking around their neighborhood, or encountered them where they lived. And so that’s how we know it probably did start at the market.

Rand Paul is either being dishonest, or he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about — in which case, again, Tony Fauci has been vindicated. Okay, continue with your bullshit, Randy.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: But then for the next year or two, he kept saying, oh, look at this paper, it looks like it came from the market —

That would be the paper I was just referring to, which I am a co-author on, showing the evidence points toward the market.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: — but privately he was saying to others in January that they already knew that.

Okay, we need to do a little timeline checking here. The paper we were referring to came out in July of 2022. And I remember exactly what day it was preprinted and the rest of the world found out this paper existed — it was in February of 2022. We had to rush, and we spent the whole weekend basically putting it together, because we had just gotten the information that allowed us to put it out there. So I remember that pretty well. That was two years after January of 2020.

So I don’t know what Rand Paul is talking about when he’s saying, look at this paper, it shows it came from the market — because that paper didn’t come out for another two years after January 2020. And I can tell you from personal experience, it’s possible that one of my co-authors dropped him a line, but none of us actually talked about alerting Fauci to this paper. At this point, we actually would not have, because some of my co-authors were in trouble for showing Tony another paper, which they published in March of 2020. And that may also be what Rand Paul is talking about.

The paper that actually shows it came from the market is the one I was referring to in 2022. But a paper that hypothesized it probably came from the market — and, more importantly, showed, with what little data we had then, that it probably didn’t come from a lab — that was called The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, by four of my co-authors, and then on top of that, my former boss. So five guys wrote this paper. It came out March 17, 2020. And it was heavily cited and very influential, because it has actually held up pretty well. There are a couple of things they didn’t get quite right, but they got the central part of the paper right: that it’s not reasonable to think this virus, based on its sequence, was the product of gain-of-function research of any kind.

It wasn’t the product of serial passaging through animals or through cell culture. It wasn’t the product of genetic engineering. There was no known backbone. In order to make this from the most closely related virus, you’d have to insert more than 1,100 different point mutations across the entire genome. And as somebody who has actually cloned viruses, I can tell you there is no reason why you would do something like that to yourself, unless you really wanted to punish yourself badly with boredom and tedious cloning shit. I can’t even think about it. It sounds so terrible.

Anyways, Rand Paul, again, is completely misrepresenting how all this works, right down to the timeline. Because the fact is, what happened with the Proximal Origin paper — which you’re about to hear so much about, so I’m just going to very briefly go over it — Kristian Andersen looked at the sequence and was like, this looks weird, maybe it’s not natural, I better let my friends know, who are all also world-class evolutionary virologists. So they said, we should tell somebody. They all respectively told important people they know, and they told Tony Fauci. So they got this teleconference together of all these important people, plus a bunch of other experts in coronavirology. And they discussed it. Some of them thought it could come from a lab, some thought it was natural, and they had this whole conversation, and it was informal. It was colleagues talking to each other, trying to work through a problem. Some of them disagreed. Some of them changed their minds.

And this has been blown out of proportion into: they said this publicly, but privately they thought this. No. This is the normal process of people shooting ideas around together, going over different hypotheses and falsifying them. It’s actually an example of scientists working together. And — oh, hey, guess what — some of us are human beings. We’re all human beings, except for our AI research assistants. And those of us who are human beings tend to make jokes with each other. And sometimes we think things one day, and then we think about it a little bit more, and like — hmm, maybe I wasn’t right yesterday. Maybe I should change my hypothesis about this. Maybe the evidence shows I should change my hypothesis about this. And this is a normal thing for scientists to do.

It’s going to be made to look like all these people were conspiring, and Tony Fauci was sort of the puppet master ordering everybody around. That’s how it’s going to continue to be presented. And boy, do I apologize for my dogs. They are outraged about this too. But that’s how it’s going to be presented. So I really do want everybody to understand that when you see that, that is what it is. It’s made-up bullshit, because Rand Paul doesn’t understand virology, and he’s counting on you not understanding it either.

[Sen. Rand Paul / interviewer]: The original cases came not from the market, but from somewhere else. Wasn’t patient zero in the lab, wasn’t he?

There was no patient zero.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: Yeah, we think patient zero — there were three people sick in Dr. Shi’s lab.

This has been discredited. This was floated by the State Department long ago. It has long been debunked. There are no three patients.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: The rumor mills were out there. The doctors were talking about it. By the time you hit January, we’re probably talking tens of thousands of people. And everybody knew it was going human to human at that point.

No, they didn’t. Blood bank data indicates there were no cases of SARS-CoV-2, based on antibodies, until after the first of January. So there were not tens of thousands of cases. Guess what — we would have noticed tens of thousands of cases of COVID, even in China. They actually do have pretty world-class scientists in China, and they know how to do epidemiology there as well. It would have been obvious.

And one of the reasons my colleagues and I even started looking at the early cases around the market was because we noticed something about the timing. We noticed from the first WHO report from March of 2021, the first origins mission they had, that influenza-like illness, increased hospitalizations, and excess mortality didn’t start increasing until January throughout Wuhan. Early on, though, all of those different measures started increasing right around the market, too. And so that’s why we started looking at that — because that’s where we started to see the excess hospitalizations coming into the picture. And then we extracted the cases and found out where they lived and all of that stuff. And that’s how we actually tried to prove that these early cases were significantly linked to the market, at least where it was geographically.

So, you know, Rand Paul, once again, misrepresents this.

[Sen. Rand Paul]: His government was suppressing this. They felt their own guilt. But then Fauci felt his guilt, because he’d been an adamant and enthusiastic supporter of gain of function. You remember, he wrote in the Washington Post — he felt guilty about that. Yes, there’s some danger, but the danger is worth it. Even if a pandemic should occur from this type of research, the danger is worth it. I don’t think the danger was worth it. There’s been no great discoveries from gain of function, and he should be vilified throughout history and throughout all time for this unreasonable risk he took with all of our lives.

Tony Fauci saved millions of lives with the work that he did. (And for the record, the op-ed Rand Paul is gesturing at was a 2011 piece about H5N1 flu research, co-authored with Gary Nabel and Francis Collins — not a confession about COVID.)

[Sen. Rand Paul]: You do it in a P3 or P4 setting, and they’re saying it’s dangerous, there are things like that — but then to know full well what happened, and then to sort of connect the dots. Wow.

He doesn’t know full well what happened. Okay? Because nobody knows full well what happened. We know what the evidence indicates, and the evidence indicates it wasn’t a lab leak — that it had emerged at the Huanan seafood market, probably through interactions with live animals being sold there, just like SARS-CoV-1 emerged in the markets of Guangzhou and Foshan. We don’t know full well what happened, but Tony Fauci didn’t lie because he was covering up a secret lab leak that he knew secretly happened. No lab leak happened. All of the evidence — which is why Tony Fauci was promoting it, or whatever — points to a natural origin in the Huanan seafood market.

Okay, so enough of Rand. I mean, that Squawk Box episode — he just really hates Tony Fauci, the “big brother of public health,” whatever. These guys have been threatening that public health officials are going to go all authoritarian on their asses, when really they’re the ones propping up a dictator.

Joe Rogan and the Yellowstone guy

And speaking of propping up dictators, let’s look at everybody’s favorite court jester for this dictatorship. This is why Tulsi — sorry, let’s try that again.

[Joe Rogan]: ...act as director of national intelligence as she’s leaving. She gave that press conference about Fauci, and she talked about how he lied in front of Congress, and that he absolutely used American tax funds to fund gain-of-function research through EcoHealth Alliance, and —

Okay, so Joe Rogan mentioning gain-of-function research. Has anybody ever asked Joe Rogan what gain-of-function research is?

Now, as I mentioned, gain-of-function research, in this context, refers to any kind of research that makes a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic — more virulent, causes worse disease, makes it worse. How do you do that? Well, you can do it a number of different ways. Sometimes you can just do it the good old-fashioned way: you can passage it through different hosts, in the case of viruses. And if you passage it through a host where maybe it’s not very pathogenic, and you keep passaging it at high titers where you actually get the host to start developing some symptoms of disease, and you keep doing that over and over again — allowing the virus to adapt to the host and to a situation in which it will cause more severe disease — then you could get a virus that was more pathogenic coming out of the end of that.

Now, I did this in graduate school. It took me two years to make a rhinovirus that could at least replicate better in mouse cells. And I was so excited. I thought it was finally going to give mice the common cold, and I was going to get my Nature paper, and I’d be able to get my PhD and graduate. And guess what — it did infect mice, but not very well, and it didn’t make them sick at all. So I did all of that gain-of-function work, hoping for a gain of function, planning for a gain of function, trying to make mice more sick with the common cold — but I failed. I’m a bad gain-of-function virologist, despite my reputation.

This really brings up an important point in the whole gain-of-function discussion. Is anybody worried that I tried to mouse-adapt rhinovirus 1A? Rhinoviruses cause common colds. If you have cystic fibrosis or you’re severely immunosuppressed, it might be a problem. But for most people, it’s annoying. If I’m making it better at infecting and causing disease in mice, is that a threat? Is that a threat to anybody, except maybe life is going to be more annoying for a couple of days for the mice — who I’m going to kill anyways? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be saying that everything is gain-of-function research, especially when you don’t know what it is, like Joe Rogan doesn’t know what it is.

And you’re about to get some flaming-hot takes, too, from Taylor Sheridan, who’s the showrunner for Yellowstone, who was Joe Rogan’s guest on this episode. These guys are constantly talking about stuff, using these phrases they don’t know the meaning of. And so they’re burning into your mind that gain-of-function research is something evil and bad. And gain-of-function research is really, really dependent on the type of gain-of-function research and the experiment you’re actually doing. And we do have mechanisms in place to make sure people aren’t doing insane gain-of-function experiments — like they say we’re just dying to do, and we make so much money doing.

So let’s hear some of the rest of what Einstein here has to say.

[Taylor Sheridan / Joe Rogan]: The Wuhan lab in Wuhan, China. And no one’s covering it. — And by the way, didn’t we all know that already? — No, we knew it, but my parents didn’t. People that just read the newspapers and watch TV, they don’t know. I’ve never seen anything as flagrantly obvious as COVID coming from the Wuhan lab studying COVID. And you’ve got fucking news anchors keeping a straight face saying it came from the wet market. — Did you ever see Jon Stewart’s bit on it that he did on the Colbert show? — No. — You never saw it? Oh, we need to play it. [...] It came from a lab in Wuhan, China, and was somehow conflated with racism. Remember that? If you said it came from Wuhan, China, from a lab, you’re racist. How did you pull that off? — It’s from fucking China, and it seems like EcoHealth Alliance funded it, and it seems like we funded EcoHealth Alliance. There’s a lot of fucking paperwork. And by the way, there are studies on the disease that they’ve been doing that are posted on the CDC website.

My favorite —

[Taylor Sheridan]: My favorite was when you catch all the shit about ivermectin. And literally when that happened — a study pops up on the CDC website while people are telling us not to take that shit. And it talks about the efficacy of ivermectin and antiviral properties, specifically COVID-19. So it’s on the government website that the fucking drug works, while they’re telling everyone not to take it.

It doesn’t work, Taylor. That’s why. Because you haven’t actually read those papers, and you don’t know how to interpret them, and you haven’t actually bothered to ask anybody to help you with that.

[Joe Rogan / Taylor Sheridan]: Whatever trust they had in the news just got severely eroded. — Yeah. — And then you get locked into conspiracy theories and echo chambers online, and you can get trapped in them too. That’s not good either.

Okay — good news: if we don’t have trust in the news, then we’re kind of adrift. Okay, Joe, so yours is the biggest echo chamber, right? And at least that’s how I understand you pronounce that word. Yours is the biggest echo chamber, and you are, like, the biggest conspiracy-theory guy of them all. You just literally had the Yellowstone dude on here talking about how it was a conspiracy that people told people not to take ivermectin, even though they secretly know it works, for some reason. That’s not true.

And we didn’t tell people not to take ivermectin because Tony Fauci told us to. We told people not to take ivermectin for COVID because it doesn’t fucking work. And all of those papers they just trashed — like, it’s not being covered by the mainstream media that we have good papers here showing it doesn’t work, and we don’t like those because they’re boring, so we’re going to go with these Children’s Health Defense or whatever papers that are in journals you’ve never heard of, or just on a blog or something, and it’s like, oh yeah, well, here’s the stuff they don’t want you to see, my parents wouldn’t know about this, they were too busy watching 60 Minutes and reading the New York Times, who don’t report any of this secret shit that’s happening —

You know what that sounds like? It sounds like a conspiracy theory. Because it is. Joe Rogan is part of this extremist pro-MAGA, pro-MAHA network that is telling you not to listen to reliable news sources and to listen to them instead, because they’re coming up with all this dumb bullshit, and they’re going to use it to do things like, say, prosecute Tony Fauci.

The “68% raise” / bioweapons clip

Now I have just one more video, and I’m sorry I’ve gone so far over time. I really do need to get going. But let me just share this.

[Clip]: Take a wild virus, and we’re going to make it more pathogenic, more virulent, more deadly. And then we’re going to develop a vaccine for that. And that’s classic gain-of-function research.

“Classic gain-of-function research.” Juice up the pathogen, make it more deadly. That would be considered a gain-of-function experiment — sort of, depending.

[Clip]: Juice up the pathogen, make a vaccine for this new pathogen you just made, and then get rich, and repeat. [...] The only real rationality about it is to develop bioweapons, and then develop a defense to those bioweapons. So that’s what they were doing. And Anthony Fauci was given a 68% raise by the military because of the new military responsibilities. He continued to do that to 2014. That year, three of the bugs escaped — high-profile escapes from three different labs.

They were high-profile escapes. There were three “lab leaks” that didn’t turn into lab leaks, because nobody got infected. There were improperly inactivated samples of Ebola and anthrax removed from containment at the CDC. And they found a very old vial of smallpox virus — variola virus — deep in a freezer somewhere at FDA. So that’s what he’s actually talking about.

[Clip]: ...really deadly bugs escaped, or were found in unsafe circumstances. And 300 scientists sent a letter to President Obama asking him to shut down Anthony Fauci’s research on —

That’s not what they asked him to do. The Cambridge Working Group, which is what he’s referring to, sent a letter asking for a moratorium, which was granted. President Obama issued a moratorium.

[Clip]: ...and shut down eighteen of the worst projects by Anthony Fauci, or ordered them shut. In the end, he really didn’t shut them. He instead moved the research offshore, where he’d be out of the oversight.

It is completely not true about Tony Fauci. He did not make bioweapons. He was not running some sort of secret bioweapons program. All of this stuff is slanderous, it’s defamatory, and it’s completely made up. And that is the basis on which everybody is saying Tony Fauci needs to be prosecuted.

The actual point

So yeah, the mainstream media isn’t covering this because Tony Fauci literally did not commit a crime. And reliable news sources are not going to cover a story that is fake. And that is what this story is. Tony Fauci did not do anything criminal. They’re trying to prosecute him anyway by manufacturing a crime against him for doing his job in the federal government. And if you guys can’t think through the implications of that, that’s really, really scary. You really need to think about what that means for you.

Because Tony Fauci was completely public. He was a completely public figure. All of his emails are available. People know everything Tony Fauci was up to during his time as NIAID director. They know what he was up to during the pandemic. That’s why Tulsi has all of these emails and all of these documents — because they were documented. And even if they were classified, they’ve eventually all been released. They contain no evidence whatsoever of a lab leak. They contain evidence of people talking to each other and investigating whether or not there was a lab leak, and talking about whether it could have been a lab leak. But what the evidence shows is that it was not a lab leak. It came from the market. And that’s what the evidence — that Tony Fauci had nothing to do with — shows. He only repeated what other scientists had found. That’s what the evidence shows. That’s not anybody’s opinion. That is a fact.

And so what all of these guys are saying is that you shouldn’t listen to facts. You should listen to their opinions that this was actually a crime. And you should put Tony Fauci in jail for the rest of his life on state and federal charges — he should be locked up, and throw away the key. I’m not so cavalier about demanding that my fellow Americans have their freedoms taken away for doing their jobs as public servants for years, for decades, as part of the federal government.

So I really do want everybody to sit with that and think about it. Think about what the implications are. If we lock up Tony Fauci for a crime that is completely invented for political reasons, what does that say about our country? And what does that say about any of our chances, should we end up in a situation where politically we’re caught in the crossfire?

One last thing: COMMENT TO OMB

Comment to the Office of Management and Budget that you don’t like Russell Vought’s plan — their director’s plan to seize power by seizing control of the entire congressionally appropriated budget. You have until July 13 to leave a comment about how you like basic infrastructure, how you like basic government services, and how you like everything that more than $1.1 trillion in government grants goes to pay for — that makes your life better, and that you probably don’t even notice because it’s always been there, but you’re going to notice it when it’s gone. So please comment before it is gone. And again, that’s at this link right here. You can also find that link anywhere you can find me, and that’s going to be on my exit slide.

See you later, guys. See you tomorrow.

Links from this episode

• The 2022 market paper (Worobey et al., Science) — The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

• The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 (Andersen et al., Nature Medicine, 2020): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

• Fauci, Nabel & Collins, A Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking (Washington Post op-ed, Dec. 30, 2011): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html

• WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part (joint report, March 2021): https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part

• The Cambridge Working Group (2014 statement calling for a moratorium): https://www.cambridgeworkinggroup.org/

• OMB “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” proposed rule (comment by July 13): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

• Public comment portal (OMB rule, Docket OMB-2026-0034): https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001

Thank you , , , , , and many others for joining me See you tomorrow at 1 pm ET.

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Hi everybody, I’m Angie Rasmussen. I just realized, much to my apologies, that I should really get some entrance music, because I think everybody can just hear the sound of me clicking my mouse — I have to click some of these things to actually start the Instagram stream. So you just hear nothing but clicking, and I feel like that’s not a very exciting way to start the premiere show that everybody wants to watch on Substack at one p.m. Eastern time. Every day I’ll be here doing this, unless I have something else to do.

Okay, well, there’s been a lot of stuff going on in the last couple of days. More of it’s the same shit I’ve been talking about so far this week and a little bit last week. The government’s still run by fascists, so we get to experience that. But yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought out all of his favorite minions — or at least the ones still standing within the Health and Human Services Department — to announce a new initiative.

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The FDA’s clown triumvirate is finally gone

One of the problems Kennedy’s been having is that the FDA was a total mess. If you recall, the FDA was run by a bunch of complete clowns, led by this triumvirate of clowns and contrarians from earlier in the pandemic.

There was Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner. He was a gastrointestinal surgeon, I think, from Johns Hopkins — specializes in pancreatic surgery. He’s made a name for himself over the years complaining that clinical trials aren’t designed well enough, and blah, blah, blah. Too many medicines I don’t like get approved, and too many I do like don’t get approved, and so on and so forth. So he was in charge of the FDA, and he did his time there trying to do various things. He had this voucher initiative in which companies could basically pay the FDA off to get their drug approved more quickly. Didn’t always happen, though — especially if you happen to be trying to get a vaccine approved. But he was basically taking money from people through this priority voucher program for FDA.

Prior to becoming FDA commissioner — and he said he resigned his position — he was the chief medical officer of a telehealth company that sold GLP-1 agonists. And that’s going to become important in just a minute. He was selling compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide to let people lose weight without having to pay full price for Ozempic or Mounjaro, which is totally fine. But I wonder if he still has a stake in any of that type of telehealth business, where he’s basically writing prescriptions on demand for people who want cheaper Ozempic. Maybe. I guess he’s got a lot of time on his hands now to do things like go to cold plunges with Gary Taubes and tell some crazy podcaster that Lyme disease was a bioweapon developed by a Nazi war criminal — one the U.S. helped liberate from Nuremberg and secretly brought back to Plum Island, where they made Lyme disease, which is a bacteria.

So that’s pretty impressive, actually, for the late 1940s, early 1950s. And they were making synthetic spirochetes. Damn — Willy Burgdorfer must have been one hell of a microbiologist. But anyways, Marty claims Lyme disease was a bioweapon developed by a Nazi war criminal and it was a lab leak, and so on and so forth. So I’m glad he’s gone as FDA commissioner. I didn’t think he did a very good job.

There was Tracy Beth Hoeg, who was the acting head of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research — the nation’s top drug regulator. She’s a Denmark super fan. She’s the type of person who went on her junior year abroad and never came back and just made it her whole entire personality. She’s an anti-vaxxer, and is still finding dead children in VAERS to lie about and say that COVID vaccines aren’t safe.

Then there was her buddy, Vinay Prasad, who is now back podcasting away. He’s a longevity guy now — big surprise there. But he’s back in his ivory tower at the University of California, San Francisco, being incredibly annoying as usual, when in reality he should be completely unwelcome at all of our functions, at all of our institutions within health and science. Because when he was the CBER director — the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the nation’s top vaccine regulator — he made all kinds of arbitrary decisions, overriding experts, ignoring evidence, basically so he could can vaccines that he didn’t like. He leaked a memo — a six-page memo. Boy, did he like to write a six-page memo — basically detailing how all vaccine decisions from now on were going to be completely political. And he disguised it as a plea for randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials.

So all three of those guys were bad. They did a terrible job at FDA, and they were just so flagrant about how they did everything. I found out that Vinay Prasad had been screwing with FDA scientists — forcing them to withdraw a paper from the journal that I’m the co-editor-in-chief of, Vaccine. You can guess why he had this paper pulled: it showed that COVID vaccines work for everybody. Boy, was I unhappy to find out about that from a reporter.

So, again, totally glad these people are gone from the FDA, because it was total chaos there, and we shouldn’t have anti-vaxxers and quacks running our nation’s drug regulator. It’s pretty important to have well-regulated medicine and food, given that we don’t want to die from eating it. And we’d like it to work. So that’s what the FDA does, and it’s pretty important.

So there’s been this acting FDA commissioner. His name is Kyle Diamantas, and he’s pretty boring. I think he’s a lawyer or something — he’s not even really a scientist — but he’s just filling space until they can find somebody permanent to take the job. And anyways, it’s never a good sign when this happens.

RFK Jr.’s new “clinical trials” initiative

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Hi, I’m Robert F. Kennedy Jr. […] I’m joined by CMS administrator Dr. Oz, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya…

My favorite.

…and acting FDA commissioner Kyle Diamantas. The United States should lead the world in clinical research and medical innovation. Instead, we built a system that drives too much research overseas.

See, this is one of the things they want to do to cut the budget. They don’t want to give any foreign grant money out, and they don’t want to do any animal research or cell culture research or research that requires labs at all.

Expertise and the future innovation often leave with it. President Trump has made it clear that America must remain the world’s leader in innovation.

Okay, yeah — President Trump is definitely leading the world there.

CMS and our partners across the department are launching a coordinated effort to strengthen America’s clinical research enterprise.

So what this means is they’re not going to actually fund any more basic research, or any other kind of research. They’re just going to wait for people to get sick and pay attention to that. And they’re going to create some kind of clinical trial mechanism to get their friendly drug companies — the ones that pay them — through the process quickly. The ones that don’t should add a lot.

We’re developing a new phase one clinical trial pilot program.

Boy, blink twice if you need help, Kyle.

We’ve also clarified that in many cases, one high-quality, late-stage clinical trial with confirmatory evidence is all that could be needed to support a treatment’s approval. Our goal is simple: maintain rigorous standards…

So basically what he’s saying is that they’re going to reduce the requirement for some clinical trials — the gold standard for developing treatments and cures of tomorrow.

Take it away, Jay.

Jay Bhattacharya: …make clinical trials faster, more efficient, and more effective while maintaining the highest standards of scientific rigor, participant safety, and ethics. We’ll leverage innovative trial designs, real-world data, and new approaches to improve equipment, reduce delays, and expand opportunities for people in rural and underserved communities to participate in research.

Yeah, but literally, how are you going to do that?

Together, we can strengthen America’s leadership in science, accelerate the development of new treatments, and help ensure that patients have access to the cutting-edge therapies they need and deserve. […] That’s why HHS is working across the department to make clinical trials more accessible and more connected to routine care. We reduce barriers, we improve participation, and strengthen research infrastructure.

Dr. Oz: We need researchers, physicians, health systems, academic medical centers, technology companies, pharmaceutical developers, and patient advocates to work with us. If regulations, contracting requirements, or institutional practices are slowing down research without improving safety, we want to hear about them.

Why is he even talking about this? He’s in charge of CMS. It’s Medicare. He’s not doing any research.

And translation: if they are getting in our way of grifting and making money from the federal government and the American taxpayer, then we’ll get rid of them.

And at the same time, we’ll protect the principles that matter most: scientific integrity, informed consent, transparency, and patient safety.

Informed consent, huh? That would imply that there is no informed consent right now — and that’s just simply not true. That is something, however, that the anti-vaxxers like to say quite a lot.

Produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Do like the new HHS logo, though. Wow. It’s got MAHA fonts and everything, right next to the HHS logo. That is depressing as can be.

Anyways, so they’ve got this new initiative to speed up clinical trials somehow. They don’t really explain how, other than Kyle from FDA saying they’re going to require maybe fewer clinical trials for their friends. So that’s encouraging. Not really.

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Trumpatrutide: one 79-year-old, one experimental obesity drug

But what’s been going on at the FDA lately? Because this morning I woke up to this headline. Boy, is this interesting. So the same reporter who let me know that Vinay Prasad had forced FDA scientists to withdraw a paper from the journal I’m the editor of — Lizzy Lawrence at STAT — came out with this scoop today. She found out that Eli Lilly, a drug maker, gave this new obesity drug — this experimental GLP-1 agonist, same class of drug as Ozempic, just a different experimental one, supposed to be one of the best weight-loss ones of them all, called retatrutide…

Yeah, there’s too many of these peptides. Anyways, it’s a GLP-1 agonist, and it’s supposed to be even better than Ozempic and Mounjaro. So some 79-year-old patient is the only person in history to have gotten compassionate use approval for this.

Compassionate use is something the FDA can do for a patient who literally has no other options. Like, they’re going to die if they don’t just try this, and they’re so sick that, you know — what the hell, it can’t hurt. Or even if it does hurt, they’re going to die anyways. So that’s what compassionate use is for. It’s usually for an off-label use of some kind of gnarly cancer drug or something. But in this case it was for this experimental GLP-1 agonist peptide that’s supposed to be the best weight-loss one ever.

And there just happens to be one person in America who is 79 years old — or was, up until this weekend — who would have maybe the juice to demand that the FDA provide compassionate use approval for a GLP-1 agonist so that he could lose a few pounds. But I have to say, President Trump is not looking so great these days. And boy, has his Truth Social and Twitter been completely unhinged. And the White House’s official Twitter has been completely unhinged — not only with this quantum dominance nonsense that I’m not even going to share, but they’ve just been completely on a tear about America’s birthday and the reflecting pool and all of this stuff.

I mean, this algae — I’ve never been so interested in a unicellular organism that’s within the microbial world but isn’t anything that gets infected with viruses that I care about. So I don’t care about algae like ninety-nine percent of the time, unless it’s preventing me from swimming or something. In this case, love the algae. Ten out of ten. Perfect review, perfect performance, algae. Really great stuff.

But Trump is not looking so great these days. People are speculating if he’s dead. And the only thing that got people to stop speculating if he’s dead or dying is the fact that now people are speculating as to whether or not polio survivor Mitch McConnell is dead. And he may be dead. He almost certainly is dead. I hope he’s dead. He was terrible, and he was old, so he’s had his shot to ruin people’s lives and actually give us Donald Trump and the stacked Supreme Court we have to contend with today. So whether you’re alive or dead — fuck off, Mitch.

However, we’re still here on this mortal plane, and as far as I know, so is Trump. And apparently his priority now is dropping a few pounds with this experimental, compassionate-use GLP-1 agonist. This is just the dumbest use of presidential power. But I guess that is this administration, because all they do is dumb stuff — until all of a sudden it’s not dumb.

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Rand Paul comes for Fauci (again)

And that’s like the next thing I’m going to talk about. Senator Rand Paul, once again — well, he never really stopped being on a tear about Tony Fauci. Tulsi Gabbard released these declassified documents that basically show people were emailing each other and talking about a possible lab leak. They don’t contain any evidence of a lab leak. I’m working on a piece about that right now. But it’s a big nothing burger, basically, and it’s intended to drive up anger toward Fauci. And so all of a sudden, all these dumb people on Fox and Newsmax are talking about gain-of-function research like they actually even know what that is. I’d be happy to chat with them about it and explain it to them — but they don’t know what it is, and actually they don’t care, and it doesn’t really matter, because they’re going to blame Fauci for doing it in China with U.S. money and starting the pandemic.

So Fauci, noting that these documents come out and now every Republican is calling for his head, calling for his pardon to be overturned, calling to convict him on new crimes, and blah blah blah — he declined to go to a voluntary transcribed interview that Rand Paul had scheduled for him and the Republicans on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That’s Rand Paul’s pet committee, and he’s going to use it to persecute Fauci, and prosecute him if he’s able to. So stay tuned for that, because Rand Paul got real mad when Fauci declined to show up.

Now, Fauci was right to do so, I think. Because not only was he about to get dumped on about these stupid documents that Tulsi Gabbard — who is part of some weird Hare Krishna cult — dumped on everybody on her way out the door at ODNI, but he also wasn’t going to have any of the Democrats there, so it wasn’t going to be bipartisan. Rand Paul said Gary Peters and his Democratic minority party buddies could just stay out during this transcribed interview. They wanted to have some alone time with Big T. And I don’t blame Fauci at all for not agreeing to that. That sounds like a very ill-advised interview to have, because one of the things they’d probably try to do is manufacture evidence of him lying under oath or committing perjury so they could prosecute him for that and call him a liar.

So instead, now Rand Paul has signed a congressional subpoena demanding that Fauci present himself before the full HSGAC and prepare to be berated by Rand Paul and all the crazy Republicans on that committee. I’ll be covering that live when it happens. Boy, do I wish I didn’t have to — but boy, do I think I’ll need to. What a mess. It’s funny, and it’s stupid. A couple of years ago, I probably would have said Rand Paul is an idiot who looks like a stalk of broccoli and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But unfortunately, the stalk of broccoli has enough juice to go after Fauci.

And the thing is, if they go after Fauci successfully, they’re going to go after a lot of other people too. It’s not that they have to get Fauci and then their lust for revenge will be satisfied. No — it will continue. Fauci will be the one that allows them to go after everybody else. So we should all really be supporting Tony Fauci right now and speaking out against this completely unjust persecution and possible prosecution of him — for basically being a career public servant who gave his entire adult professional life to serving the American people, to guiding them through multiple epidemics and public health crises, and actually continuing his own research lab the entire time.

I think people forgot what a good public servant is. It’s somebody who’s actually effective at communicating, somebody who’s actually effective at the politics. And at NIH, it’s very complicated. It’s a big place — a big agency full of institutes and centers, thousands of employees. Being in charge of one of those institutes, especially one of the biggest and most prominent ones, and dealing with things like the HIV crisis, like when Zika emerged, like having Ebola patients in the U.S. when people were infected at a hospital in Texas — Tony Fauci was there through all of that, and his interest was serving the American people. Of course it was that too during the COVID pandemic.

So we shouldn’t be prosecuting government employees for being exceptional at their jobs and for literally devoting decades of their lives to it. That’s just my view, because I think civil service is something honorable that people can do to serve their country. Even if they don’t go serve it in combat, they can still serve the American people by working for the government and making America work for its people. That’s what Tony Fauci did for his whole career, and he doesn’t deserve this. And neither do any of us — because that’s what it’s going to be used for. It’s going to be used for undoing all of our freedoms, our liberties, and certainly our science.

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Greenland, Red Lobster, and unlimited shrimp

Okay, speaking of dumb assholes who want to do stuff that is undemocratic and unwise: Trump has appointed this fellow who is the twin brother of Russell Vought’s Project 2025 co-author to be in charge of the Arctic Research — I don’t know, unit. I can’t remember what it’s called. The Arctic Research Consortium or something. It’s basically the agency of the U.S. government devoted to researching in the Arctic. So that means researching climate change. It also means researching rare minerals and resource deposits and things like that. So this guy has been hanging out in Greenland and conducting foreign operations there.

Is that very surprising to you? It’s not very surprising to me that somebody appointed to a position that requires Senate confirmation, I believe — to run the research agency for the Arctic — goes to a sovereign Arctic country and starts running foreign influence operations there to make it easier, should the U.S. decide it wants to invade Greenland. Which is, by the way, an ally of the U.S., and we shouldn’t invade them. That would also kind of violate NATO pretty seriously.

So when confronted with the fact that he is in fact trying to run political operations in Greenland while being appointed by the president for a position that involves Arctic places like Greenland — probably kind of a conflict of interest, and might be considered unethical — well, he excused this by saying he was just doing his part to help the American economy. Because Red Lobster has seen some tough times lately, and we’re buying all our shrimp and shellfish from China. I am not even joking that this is what this guy said. We need to stop ceding the shellfish market to China. So we need Greenland — basically, we need Greenland and all of its crustaceans so that we can fuel all-you-can-eat shrimp night at Red Lobster.

Now, of all those types of restaurants — Olive Garden, Chili’s, TGI Fridays and stuff — Red Lobster is hands down my favorite. The Cheddar Bay Biscuits are great, and you really can’t screw up lobster and crab that much. You can. But as long as you’re not expecting the greatest shellfish dinner you’re ever going to eat, Red Lobster is perfectly suitable for if you’re stuck somewhere and it’s the choice between that and the Applebee’s. Red Lobster every single time. But I don’t think they were ever short on shrimp, and I don’t think all their shrimp comes from China either. And I’m not sure any shrimp comes from Greenland. Codfish certainly does — my people in Norway love to fish for cod, and there’s lots of cod and things like that. I’m sure there’s shrimp, but I don’t know that there are these huge shrimp fisheries this guy’s talking about.

I think it’s really stupid that we’re at the point where these guys are just blatantly doing corruption and foreign influence campaigns, and they get caught, and they’re like, “I was just trying to make it so that Red Lobster doesn’t run out of shrimp.” I mean, come on. Also, I should add that Red Lobster has, like, a new CEO or something — no, it’s this guy who bought Red Lobster, or took over Red Lobster. I can’t remember what the deal was. They were about to be sold up to venture capital, to the highest bidder, so they could be dismantled, and he swooped in and bought Red Lobster, and now he’s making Red Lobster thrive again — which I am a hundred percent for. But it doesn’t look like he needs Greenland to do it. So leave Red Lobster out of this. I don’t think they need to be part of this international geopolitical beef. I just think it’s incredibly stupid that this guy got caught and his excuse was Red Lobster.x

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Leave a comment: don’t let Russell Vought steal the power of the purse

Okay, so this is getting close to the end here. Boy, I’ve been chit-chatting, and the time has just flown by. But I have one more very important thing to say.

Save America Movement

Sometimes The Fascism Is In The Fine Print

Yes, Russell Vought is a nerd -- but he's an evil one…

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2 months ago · 56 likes · 5 comments · The Save America Movement

You probably noticed this little banner on the bottom of the screen that’s been there for the whole show. Well, today, — which I am the science chair of — released a Substack article, as well as a small video starring yours truly, explaining why you should click this link and leave a comment. Because this link is the comments to the proposed changes to OMB’s rules — basically, how they operate.

These proposed changes — and I know this is terribly boring — would allow the fascist accountant in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, to essentially take control of the entire congressionally appropriated budget. So this would be over a trillion dollars to start with in federal grant money. And he’d be able to withhold that money from people who were his enemies, and give that money to people who were his friends. And he’d install a network of political censors throughout the government to make sure those grants are only distributed to people whose ideas are aligned politically with so-called presidential priorities. Not a cent will leave the federal government under Russell Vought’s watch that is not designed to enhance MAGA priorities.

If you don’t want to enhance MAGA priorities, and you think your tax dollars should go to other things — like, say, state grants that pay for roads and hospitals and fire departments and libraries and parks and schools and, let’s see, community health centers, health departments, community pools, reflecting pools even — they pay for pool maintenance. These federal grants to states pay for quite a lot of our community services that we rely on, and frankly, at least in my case, that I sometimes take for granted. So if you don’t want this guy — this bald Weasley guy, and I wish I had a picture of him, because he’s really sinister-looking — if you don’t want this guy to take all of this money and essentially give it to his friends, redirect the rest of it to Trump, shit all over the appropriations clause of the Constitution, and undermine and destroy American democracy — then you need to leave a comment.

Because the one thing that seems to work pretty well with these guys is when so many people hate their ideas that they’re just like, “You know what, too much trouble. We’ll try something else.” So we do not want Russell Vought getting this through. And that means you need to leave a comment. Just leave a comment and say how much you like the things you like in your community. I bet a federal grant pays for them. It’s not just science grants to nerds like me — it’s everything in your community that you enjoy that’s provided to you by the state, and was probably supported by a federal block grant. So comment from the heart. Tell the government you don’t want Russell Vought stealing your money, that you don’t want Russell Vought taking over the power of the purse from Congress, which is where it needs to be for the separation of powers in our government.

So thanks so much, everybody. This was a really, really great episode. I like doing this every day at the same time — it gives me some regularity. So I’ll see you back here tomorrow, one p.m. Eastern. And don’t forget to go check out and follow me or the Save America Movement for more information about that last part, because I really do think you should leave a comment by July 13th. So please do that, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Links from this episode

• Vinay Prasad & Tracy Beth Hoeg’s grip on FDA vaccine policy (incl. the Vaccine paper withdrawal), STAT — statnews.com

• HHS clinical trials initiative announcement — HHS press release

• Eli Lilly / retatrutide “compassionate use” scoop (Lizzy Lawrence, STAT) — statnews.com

• Arctic Research Commission chair Thomas Dans on Greenland and Red Lobster shrimp — The New Republic

• OMB “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” proposed rule — Federal Register

• Leave a comment (Docket OMB-2026-0034, due July 13, 2026) — regulations.gov

Thank you , , , , , and many others for joining me! See you tomorrow.

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