BOMSHELL Fauci diary entries loom over Senate hearing

[0:00] However, there was this, we got a showdown that's years in the making. [0:03] Dr. Anthony Fauci will testify before Congress after Senator Rand Paul published entries from the doctor's private diary, [0:11] calling them further proof that Fauci misled the public. [0:15] That hearing on the docket for tomorrow morning, and that is where we begin. [0:19] Day of significance, I think you'd say. [0:21] I'm Bill Hemmer, live in New York, and here we go. [0:23] Good morning. [0:23] Good morning. [0:24] I'm Dana Perino, and this is America's Newsroom. [0:26] And Senator Paul and Dr. Fauci, as you know, they've had this long disagreement over the origins of COVID [0:31] and whether it came from the Wuhan lab or a wet market. [0:35] And the senator points to this diary entry from January 2020. [0:39] Fauci writes, now we know the market was not the source. [0:43] It was the amplifier. [0:44] Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans. [0:49] But here's what Fauci told Fox and Friends a few months later. [0:53] Are you calling for the closure of the wet markets? [0:56] I think they should shut down those things right away. [0:59] I mean, it just, it boggles my mind how when we have so many diseases [1:04] that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, [1:09] that we don't just shut it down. [1:11] What we're going through right now is a direct result of that. [1:15] Senator Rand Paul says that is just one example of Fauci not being forthcoming with the public. [1:21] You know, one of the biggest items that we found in there was that in January of 2020, [1:27] he already was acknowledging that the virus didn't originate in the marketplace. [1:32] For years, the earliest people who got COVID were not associated with the marketplace. [1:38] The Chinese CDC was saying this in January of 2020. [1:41] He knew it. [1:42] He told Dear Diary. [1:43] But to the public, he commissioned this paper called Proximal Origins. [1:46] And in it, they go on and on saying it's implausible that it came from the lab. [1:51] And just moments ago on Fox and Friends, President Trump weighed in as well, [1:56] saying this when asked about Fauci's contradictions. [1:59] If you remember early on when it first came, I always said it came from the Wuhan labs. [2:04] And labs, I never changed my tune on that. [2:07] I think he said something different. [2:08] He was a much bigger player in the Biden administration. [2:12] I grew tired of him. [2:13] He was, you remember that, you know, he wanted to close everything down. [2:18] I allowed it to be up to the governors. [2:20] And most or many of the Republican governors didn't want to close. [2:23] And, you know, being somewhat of a federalist, the federalist theory is let the governors make [2:28] the decision. [2:29] And we let them. [2:30] The blue states were mostly closed. [2:34] And the red states were open or they started to open very fast. [2:38] So we begin this morning with former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, [2:42] who has been a critic from right near the beginning of this over Fauci's policies. [2:47] And good morning to you, Alex. [2:49] Late March 2020, you jumped on this quickly. [2:53] How do you look at it now? [2:56] Well, I mean, there's so much in this diary that has come out. [3:00] It's the arguments over where the virus came from. [3:05] There's evidence that Fauci thought very early on that this was less dangerous than people, [3:11] than most people thought publicly. [3:13] But he didn't say that. [3:14] He encouraged shutdowns. [3:16] He encouraged very aggressive measures that proved actually not to be necessary. [3:21] And what I would say most of all, when you read the diary, and I've now read almost the [3:26] whole diary, is his ego is overwhelming. [3:31] He talks about how happy he is to be this important figure. [3:36] He's an international celebrity, he says. [3:38] He's the most important person in the United States, he says. [3:41] He's obviously glorying in this. [3:44] And, you know, listen, you saw some of that publicly, but he became far too big for his britches. [3:51] He thought everyone in the world should listen to him. [3:54] And so it was in his interest almost to make this epidemic seem worse than it was. [3:59] And it's painful to see this five years later, six years later. [4:02] It's also painful to realize that he was spending so much time talking to Jake Tapper [4:07] and everyone else in the Washington press corps that he was not keeping up with the most sort of [4:12] most advanced science on COVID, whether that was virology or epidemiology. [4:18] And, I mean, it's an amazing thing to realize that a handful of us on Twitter [4:21] were more accurate and more forward-looking about this [4:25] than the most important medical advisor in the United States [4:28] because that guy was so in love with himself, [4:31] he wasn't bothering to actually keep up with the science. [4:34] It's really stunning. [4:34] Alex, Kennedy is one of the people that we work with here, of course, [4:38] and her kids were, you know, middle school age when all of this happened, [4:42] high school age. [4:43] And, you know, the anger and the disappointment, [4:46] the frustration is still so real. [4:48] And on the lockdowns, in his diary on March 15th, 2020, he says, [4:53] I spoke with Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, [4:55] and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly [4:57] and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools, [5:01] he had already decided based on what I was saying on TV, [5:03] I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in New York City. [5:08] And then, fast forward two years, [5:11] and this is what he said about never suggesting lockdowns. [5:16] I wonder if you would recommend locking down schools [5:19] if you had to do it all over again. [5:22] Well, you know, again, it's, first of all, [5:24] I didn't recommend locking anything down. [5:26] You're asking me questions. [5:28] You're talking about the CDC is the public health agency [5:31] that uses their epidemiologists [5:34] and their science-based approach to make recommendations. [5:38] Alex, parents like Kennedy, [5:40] who are still steaming mad about this, [5:42] are looking at their kids or their kids' friends [5:44] and all of that they're dealing with [5:47] for having to deal with that lockdown. [5:49] I mean, the anger is so real still. [5:51] And I wonder about the look back [5:54] and how it really degraded trust [5:56] in public institutions like health. [6:00] Oh, I mean, absolutely. [6:01] There are, I mean, [6:03] we are still dealing with a loss of trust [6:06] in the CDC, in public health. [6:07] And frankly, they deserve to be distrusted [6:10] for the way they behaved. [6:11] And Anthony Fauci was an absolute partisan. [6:15] You know, there's stuff in the diaries [6:16] in April of 2020 where he says, [6:18] well, I don't want to be, you know, [6:20] basically on Trump's side. [6:22] We have to be non-partisan here. [6:24] A year later, he's traveling around [6:26] with Jill Biden to push vaccinations [6:29] and talking about what a wonderful first lady she is. [6:32] Apparently his concerns about partisanship [6:34] did not extend to when there was a Democrat [6:37] in the White House. [6:38] And so he did, he's done tremendous damage. [6:44] And, you know, Biden pardoned him [6:45] at the end of his term. [6:47] And so there will not be a legal reckoning [6:49] for Anthony Fauci. [6:50] So you wonder then. [6:51] Hopefully there will be a reputation [6:52] for his reputation. [6:52] You wonder if he takes the fifth tomorrow [6:54] when that hearing begins. [6:56] We will wait on that. [6:57] We'll watch tomorrow at 8.30 Eastern time. [6:59] Alex, go back to what we quoted a moment ago. [7:02] January 26, 2020, this is very important now. [7:05] In the diary, he ruled out the market theory in Wuhan. [7:09] Ruled it out. [7:10] He said it was not the source, [7:12] it was the amplifier. [7:14] Which means the lab then had to be in question. [7:16] So what is the motivation not to blame the lab? [7:20] As you analyze it today, [7:22] was it gain-of-function research? [7:25] Was it the money that, albeit not great sums, [7:28] that went to these labs around the world [7:30] that were paid for by U.S. taxpayers? [7:33] What's the motivation? [7:35] Yeah, I mean, so first of all, [7:37] let's thank Rand Paul for continuing to do this work [7:40] and his staff for doing this for five years [7:42] when a lot of people have forgotten about it. [7:44] Because without him, without them, [7:46] we would not be talking about this today. [7:48] But the motivation is, and by the way, [7:50] I think we all have to believe at this point [7:52] that this came out of a lab [7:53] because there's been no finding of an animal, [7:56] a bat or any other animal that had any virus [7:58] that is like SARS-CoV-2, [8:00] that is, you know, that is 99.9% the same as SARS-CoV-2. [8:04] And so as the years go by, [8:06] it becomes more and more likely [8:07] that this is what, you know, [8:08] what some of us thought early on, [8:10] that this came from a lab. [8:12] So what's Fauci's motivation? [8:13] Fauci knew that he had been funding the Wuhan lab [8:17] indirectly through a guy named Peter Daszak. [8:19] And he knew what that would look like [8:21] if the world believed that this virus, [8:25] which was already clearly a problem, [8:27] which was going to shut down the world, [8:29] had come from U.S. research, [8:31] research that he had funded, [8:33] research that in 2011, [8:34] Anthony Fauci said, [8:36] even if a virus results in a pandemic [8:39] from work that is done in a lab, [8:40] that work is worth doing. [8:42] That was his public position. [8:44] And he suddenly knew what the risks were. [8:45] And he knew he had to do everything possible [8:47] to hide that and to steer people away. [8:50] And that is what he did. [8:51] And that is why even five years later, [8:53] we don't have a good answer. [8:54] It is really on him. [8:56] Alex, some are saying, [8:58] well, why are we treading over this old ground? [9:00] But to me, there is a little bit of a silver lining [9:02] in that we have the diary, [9:04] we have the information now. [9:06] And could it be that if this were to happen again, [9:09] we would either be more prepared to be more skeptical [9:12] or the government's going to be more prepared? [9:15] Is there anything here that you can look at and say, [9:17] it's a good thing that we know this now? [9:20] Oh, yeah. [9:20] I mean, I think if there's another COVID, [9:22] if there's another sort of moderately dangerous, [9:26] you know, respiratory virus, [9:28] people are not going to put up with a lockdown. [9:30] And certainly in the red states, that will not happen. [9:32] People will say, you know what? [9:34] We've been through this. [9:35] We're not going to let you scare us and stampede us. [9:37] And honestly, before 2019, [9:40] the belief was in the event of, you know, [9:42] sort of a serious but not devastating flu epidemic [9:46] or other respiratory virus epidemic, [9:48] you let the world go forward. [9:50] You let schools stay open. [9:52] You don't sacrifice everything on the altar [9:54] of a few people who are really sick to begin with. [9:57] And that is what we should do. [9:58] And I think and hope we will remember that going forward. [10:01] We can't be stampeded by fear. [10:03] Alex, thanks for coming back. [10:05] And we'll see what we get tomorrow. [10:05] Alex Barron, be sure to like and subscribe [10:09] for all the Fox News latest on YouTube [10:11] and catch full shows streaming now on Fox One.