Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 27, 2023


Fauci Lied, Millions Died-Bombshell Report Confirms Covid Came From A Chinese Lab

Topics
lab leak theory
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Glenn Kessler Fauci Mark Zuckerberg Peter Daszak Donald Trump Jeff Bezos COVID-19 Biden Alejandro Mayorkas Jennifer Stewart Robert Redfield Caitlin Clark Merrick Garland Stephen Colbert Nicole Wallace Patriot Mobile Ben Ferguson Tom Cotton Joe Rogan Don Lemon and 3 more
Media Lies & Hypocrisy： From Don Lemon to Andrea Mitchell to the NYT Justice Corrupted： FBI STILL Refuses to Take Accountability for Politicization

Episode Stats


Length

44 minutes

Words per minute

152.88

Word count

6,878

Sentence count

464

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz reacts to the Biden administration admitting that a Chinese government lab is most likely the source of the deadly coronavirus that spread across the U.S. in the early days of the pandemic in the late 2000s.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.520 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.420 Welcome to his verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:07.040 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:08.600 The headline, Senator, and I want to get your reaction to this.
00:00:12.220 It's something you've been talking about literally now for years.
00:00:16.100 The lab leak and that theory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
00:00:20.480 they're now admitting, is most likely the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:00:26.660 I wish I could say that we're shocked.
00:00:28.560 We're not, and anyone that said this early on, you were included, was a conspiracy theorist.
00:00:34.680 Give me your initial reaction to this.
00:00:37.360 Well, we now have yet another part of the Biden administration
00:00:41.120 admitting what I think has been blazingly obvious for a long time,
00:00:45.260 which is that the COVID virus very likely escaped from a Chinese government lab.
00:00:52.180 Just in the last 24 hours, the Biden Energy Department, the news has broken,
00:01:00.060 has concluded that that is the likely source of COVID.
00:01:04.860 Now, you didn't have to wait until 2023 to find that out.
00:01:08.480 This podcast has been laying out the facts that connect the COVID virus to the Wuhan Institute
00:01:16.260 for Virology, to the Chinese government labs in Wuhan, China,
00:01:20.160 laying out the facts and fighting against the deliberate disinformation from Democrats,
00:01:28.120 from the media, from big tech, and from the Chinese government itself,
00:01:33.900 with the American government often arm-in-arm in spreading disinformation
00:01:39.420 and trying to squash what the facts actually demonstrate.
00:01:44.220 I want to play for people something that is probably not going to be played anywhere else,
00:01:51.940 and it's something that we wanted to do today,
00:01:54.180 to go back in time to remind you of this narrative.
00:01:58.400 And if you go back to February the 9th of 2020,
00:02:02.860 the defense that was taking place by China was,
00:02:07.180 if you point the finger at us,
00:02:10.560 if you point the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, 0.95
00:02:13.520 you are a racist, 0.75
00:02:15.620 you are trying to turn people against people that are Chinese, 1.00
00:02:19.640 and you are a bigoted individual. 0.72
00:02:22.520 This happened on Face the Nation, February the 9th, 2020.
00:02:25.980 The ambassador from China was a guest,
00:02:28.560 and I want everyone to hear this.
00:02:30.160 Take a listen.
00:02:31.060 And in fact, this week,
00:02:33.060 Senator Tom Cotton,
00:02:34.600 who sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee,
00:02:38.320 suggested that the virus may have come from China's biological warfare program.
00:02:43.520 That's an extraordinary charge.
00:02:46.000 How do you respond to that?
00:02:48.140 I think it's true that a lot is still unknown.
00:02:52.180 And our scientists, Chinese scientists, American scientists,
00:02:56.120 scientists of other countries are doing their best to learn more about the virus.
00:02:59.800 But it's very harmful.
00:03:01.640 It's very dangerous to stir up suspicion, rumors, and spread them among the people.
00:03:08.020 For one thing, this will create panic.
00:03:10.500 Another thing is that it will fend up racial discrimination, xenophobia,
00:03:15.620 all these things that will really harm our joint efforts to combat the virus.
00:03:20.600 Of course, there are all kinds of speculations and rumors.
00:03:25.320 There are people who are saying that these virus are coming from some military lab,
00:03:30.280 not of China, maybe in the United States.
00:03:32.920 How can we believe all these crazy things?
00:03:36.780 You think it's crazy?
00:03:38.140 Where did the virus come from?
00:03:38.540 Absolutely crazy.
00:03:39.940 Where did the virus come from?
00:03:41.680 We still don't know yet.
00:03:42.860 It's probably, according to some initial outcome of the research,
00:03:47.840 probably coming from some animals.
00:03:50.660 But we have to discover more about it.
00:03:54.300 We know that's a lie now.
00:03:56.480 And we know the entire time, not only did China lie to the rest of the world, 0.78
00:04:01.000 but many within our own media center were trying to sell the lies on the behalf of China
00:04:06.300 and their propaganda.
00:04:08.080 How damning of this is it of an indictment of the media just not doing their jobs?
00:04:13.420 Well, look, that was February of 2020.
00:04:15.640 That was right at the outbreak of the pandemic.
00:04:19.320 And it is striking how many of the Democrat talking points
00:04:23.540 and how many of the media talking points
00:04:25.360 and how many of the big tech talking points
00:04:27.240 are literally word for word being dictated by the Chinese government.
00:04:32.980 You know, that whole diatribe about xenophobia and racism,
00:04:36.780 because, you know, the government of China is very concerned about xenophobia and racism
00:04:40.900 when they're running concentration camps.
00:04:42.860 With a million Uyghurs and torturing and murdering them. 1.00
00:04:45.320 It is shameless, but they know that Democrats and the media will happily parrot it. 0.57
00:04:52.900 And let's go back to two months later.
00:04:54.820 So in April of 2020, Glenn Kessler, who is the Washington Post fact checker,
00:05:00.920 which means he is charged. 0.97
00:05:03.420 He is their liar in chief. 0.99
00:05:05.140 His record is so bad. 1.00
00:05:06.920 He is so partisan that it becomes laughable.
00:05:09.700 Well, on April 30th, 2020, Glenn Kessler tweeted out, quote,
00:05:15.040 watch this amazing video by two people.
00:05:17.840 Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? 0.97
00:05:22.880 It's doubtful.
00:05:23.760 And he has this whole elaborate video that the Washington Post put together.
00:05:28.040 Now, at that same time, I responded the next day and I had a 10 thread, a 10 tweet tweet thread just taking this apart.
00:05:43.100 I'm just going to run back through it because it's worth noting.
00:05:45.500 This is at the outset.
00:05:47.040 This is on May 1st, 2020.
00:05:51.420 Amazing is definitely the right word for this video.
00:05:54.660 The Washington Post, quote,
00:05:56.340 abandoning all pretenses of journalism to produce CCP propaganda would be another way to put it.
00:06:03.100 If this reporter submitted this video in a freshman logic class, it wouldn't receive a passing grade.
00:06:11.000 Let's review the facts.
00:06:13.400 Fact number one.
00:06:14.480 Washington Post admits two separate labs in Wuhan were studying coronaviruses derived from bats.
00:06:22.380 One lab was just 300 yards from the Wuhan wet market.
00:06:28.780 Fact number two.
00:06:30.300 Washington Post admits bats with similar coronaviruses, quote,
00:06:35.740 live in caves 1,000 miles away.
00:06:40.320 Fact number three.
00:06:41.600 Washington Post admits both labs had serious safety concerns resulting in multiple U.S. State Department wires before this crisis,
00:06:54.440 warning that shoddy safety protocols could lead to a global coronavirus pandemic.
00:07:01.700 Fact number four.
00:07:03.100 Washington Post admits China destroyed the lab samples after the pandemic started,
00:07:11.320 raising the natural inference that they were afraid what the samples, if examined, would show.
00:07:18.940 All of these facts strongly suggest the virus escaped from one of these CCP labs.
00:07:26.040 At this point, the evidence is circumstantial because the CCP is hiding and blocking any direct evidence.
00:07:32.480 But what is the Washington Post's conclusion?
00:07:35.100 Quote, the balance of the scientific evidence strongly suggests the conclusion that the new coronavirus emerged from nature,
00:07:43.640 be it in the Wuhan market or somewhere else.
00:07:46.440 This is a non sequitur.
00:07:48.640 None of the aforementioned evidence leads to that conclusion.
00:07:51.420 What is the Washington Post's basis?
00:07:54.820 Well, Washington Post counterfact number one.
00:07:58.660 The CCP and the lab director who initially wrote, quote,
00:08:04.440 could the pandemic virus have come from our lab, end quote, now deny it.
00:08:11.260 Quote, this is the Washington Post.
00:08:13.480 She, her team and the Chinese government have adamantly denied that it could have come from this lab.
00:08:18.640 Washington Post takes that denial from the Chinese communists as true.
00:08:25.280 Washington Post counterfact number two.
00:08:28.460 They quote Dr. Peter Daszak, the head of the EcoHealth Alliance, as saying, quote,
00:08:36.880 China's been incredibly open.
00:08:39.340 I believe it's because it's a scientific collaboration.
00:08:42.920 And in China, they're really proud of their science.
00:08:45.340 They do good work, especially in virology.
00:08:48.640 That's it.
00:08:50.260 Those two counterfacts form 100% of the basis for Washington Post, quote, fact check.
00:08:58.240 And number two, the claim that, quote, China's been incredibly open, end quote, is laughably absurd.
00:09:07.240 They destroyed the lab samples.
00:09:10.140 They punished and they silenced the pandemic whistleblowers.
00:09:13.220 And who is this objective source, Dr. Daszak?
00:09:17.840 Well, his organization, EcoHealth Alliance, was receiving, now canceled, U.S.
00:09:23.100 taxpayer dollars to support bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:09:31.520 Why does the Washington Post not disclose his enormous bias, litigation exposure, and conflict of interest?
00:09:39.560 And then finally, and is it relevant that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos,
00:09:45.180 the richest man in the world, who stands to make billions in China if he pleases the communist overlords?
00:09:52.520 Whatever Washington Post is doing, this is not journalism.
00:09:57.560 It is apologizing for the CCP, trying to cover up their culpability.
00:10:02.440 Now, you go back and you think about how long ago this was.
00:10:07.920 And it was a time when there were people that were literally canceled from social media, silenced by doctors, silenced by the CDC.
00:10:18.540 If you said anything that was out of sorts with what the narrative was, and then we find out that all the conspiracy theories, theorists, are now, well, we were right.
00:10:29.860 And we were right all along. And there were many in the world of research that also were pointing to this and saying,
00:10:40.520 hey, we think this came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:10:43.620 Many of their careers were either stifled or ruined for just saying that.
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00:12:18.240 Senator, I go back to the people that tried to, and I don't even think they looked at themselves at the time as whistleblowers.
00:12:25.340 I think they just thought they were doing their jobs, getting the facts out.
00:12:28.800 And they were treated like they were basically anarchists.
00:12:32.780 They were crazies. 0.95
00:12:34.320 They were to be silenced, shut down. 1.00
00:12:36.920 Their lives to be ruined.
00:12:38.680 Their careers to be ruined.
00:12:40.260 The press felt no accountability.
00:12:42.800 They were confident they could lie with impunity.
00:12:45.380 You know, the 10-tweet thread that I just reviewed a moment ago.
00:12:51.060 Do you know how Glenn Kessler responded to that 10-tweet thread that actually went through the facts that were obvious then, three years ago?
00:12:58.880 Yeah, you would be public enemy number one at that point because you were asking questions.
00:13:02.820 Well, he responded with the following, quote,
00:13:05.120 I fear Ted Cruz missed the scientific animation, ah, the animation, in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab, I think he's missing the word too, or the many interviews with actual scientists.
00:13:24.760 We deal in facts, we deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.
00:13:31.120 So, he is pompous and self-satisfied.
00:13:34.220 He has opined, these are the facts. 1.00
00:13:37.800 Well, Glenn, I rate your video and your tweet with 439 Pinocchios and a pants on fire and you're full of crap at the same time. 0.94
00:13:50.220 Don't worry, they're going to now fact-check you on everything for the next six months to punish you for saying that. 0.96
00:13:54.940 They do that anyway.
00:13:55.240 They do that anyway, and the problem is they're laughably bad at it because they just, what they call facts, are nothing more than left-wing editorial views.
00:14:06.600 They view it as an absolute fact.
00:14:08.540 So, this tweet and what Washington Post claimed were the objective facts, now the Biden Department of Energy has concluded is false.
00:14:20.340 That what they said is virtually impossible is, in fact, what the Biden Department of Energy and the Biden FBI both believe is the likely explanation for what happened.
00:14:32.140 Now, I will confess, I'm not exactly holding my breath, waiting for the Washington Post to issue a retraction.
00:14:42.240 I'm not expecting them to fact-check themselves because they believe the rules don't apply to them.
00:14:49.000 And I do think there are serious questions to ask about why is it that the media engaged in a concerted effort to silence the obvious inference.
00:15:05.480 Look, we were making this point on the podcast in the first couple of months of the pandemic because the facts were clear even back then.
00:15:13.400 And yet, the corporate media had, I believe, a financial interest, a political interest, a partisan interest in silencing the facts and covering up for the Chinese Communist government.
00:15:28.120 And in labeling anyone who pointed out those facts a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists.
00:15:35.320 And also, using the power of big tech to suppress them.
00:15:39.740 Listen, we know that Dr. Fauci asked Mark Zuckerberg, in writing, in email, to suppress people on Facebook posting that the COVID virus came from a Chinese lab.
00:15:53.040 So, big tech, and presumably, by the way, all the rest of big tech, was equally complicit in silencing those views.
00:16:01.840 It's an example of, quite simply, relentless media lies.
00:16:08.520 Let's talk about the here and now and what the fallout could be or maybe should be from this compared to what's probably going to happen.
00:16:17.740 The lab leak, and again, I'm going to read this because it's important.
00:16:21.940 Most likely, origin of COVID-19 pandemic, Energy Department now says, came from Wuhan.
00:16:28.840 U.S.'s agency has revised their assessments, quote, based, and this is coming from the Wall Street Journal, on new intelligence.
00:16:36.540 Do we know, Senator, what that new intelligence is?
00:16:41.260 Because, again, I go back to Fauci here.
00:16:43.700 Fauci dismissed the Wuhan lab leak theory as a shiny object.
00:16:47.720 Those were his exact words in an April 2020 email.
00:16:51.300 He called it a shiny object.
00:16:54.040 And so, at that point, you've got to ask, Jeff, why was he helping basically China cover this up so much?
00:16:58.620 So, I don't know what that new intelligence was.
00:17:01.880 And one of the reasons why I'm speaking so freely about it now on this podcast is I haven't seen the classified briefing at issue.
00:17:09.300 This broke.
00:17:10.360 Somebody leaked the classified briefing.
00:17:13.260 I haven't gotten it.
00:17:15.060 I will be back in Washington this week in the Senate.
00:17:18.520 I'm certainly going to press to see.
00:17:20.880 I want to see this Department of Energy report that has now been leaked.
00:17:24.580 But since I haven't seen it, I'm not revealing classified information.
00:17:27.680 I don't know what's in it.
00:17:28.780 What I do know is what the press did was so comprehensive.
00:17:34.520 So, let me run through several examples and actually comfortably smug, who is a friend and is great on Twitter, put together a thread of just some of the most egregious media lies trying to cover up the origins of COVID.
00:17:51.040 So, for example, PolitiFact gave a Tucker Carlson guest a pants on fire for the, quote, debunked conspiracy theory that COVID came from a lab.
00:18:04.060 Now, to PolitiFact's credit, they've since withdrawn that blatantly false fact check.
00:18:12.560 But they started with pants on fire and debunked because their view is, well, the Chinese communists tell us, so it must be true. 1.00
00:18:20.300 Here's another example.
00:18:21.700 Media Matters said influential podcast host Joe Rogan spread an unfounded claim that COVID-19, quote, comes out of a lab in Wuhan.
00:18:32.460 And, of course, they haven't corrected that.
00:18:36.200 The New York Times reporter, this is a New York Times reporter, Apoorva Mandevili, who tweeted in May of 2021,
00:18:47.260 Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots.
00:18:57.020 But alas, that day is not yet here.
00:19:00.440 So that's a New York Times reporter who, what is she doing, repeating the talking points from the Chinese Communist Party.
00:19:09.240 How about another time?
00:19:11.540 After Trump and Pompeo had floated the lab leak theory, CNN's Don Lemon, who we talked about a lot in our last podcast, asked on air, quote,
00:19:21.580 How far off are the president's claims compared to what your sources are telling you?
00:19:26.880 CNN senior reporter Alexander Markhart, well, Don, they're pretty much the exact opposite.
00:19:34.020 And how about this?
00:19:36.320 MSNBC's Nicole Wallace, quote,
00:19:40.160 Donald Trump is turning his intelligence community to now investigate a conspiracy theory about COVID coming from a lab in Wuhan.
00:19:49.700 Here's another example from the editor-in-chief of Scientific American.
00:19:57.060 This is March 26, 2021.
00:20:00.140 Quote,
00:20:00.960 On CNN, former CDC director Robert Redfield shared the conspiracy theory that the virus came from the Wuhan lab.
00:20:10.300 Epidemiologists and virologists are doing heroic and urgent work on social media debunking everything he said.
00:20:19.060 Thanks so much to them.
00:20:21.080 Now, pause to reflect on that.
00:20:23.440 The former director of the CDC had the guts to speak out and say the truth.
00:20:29.780 And what happened?
00:20:31.640 The left universally hammered down and decided we're going to try to discredit the former director of the CDC,
00:20:40.320 just like they went after doctors at Stanford and Harvard or Yale who dared take them up.
00:20:46.000 This was a concerted effort at lying.
00:20:50.300 And every person who engaged in these lies should be held accountable.
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00:21:25.480 It goes back to even CNN now trying to cover themselves.
00:21:28.900 And I want to play audio from today where they actually came out and tried to somehow report this news while downplaying.
00:21:37.300 And I'm going to play that for you in just a moment.
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00:22:59.880 Now, Senator, CNN this morning, they come out, want to, you know, cover the, quote, breaking news.
00:23:05.320 The U.S. Department of Energy is assessing that COVID-19 likely resulted from a lab leak.
00:23:10.540 But they still want you to know they think the chances of this being right are still low,
00:23:17.460 but they're reporting it as fact.
00:23:19.440 Listen carefully.
00:23:20.680 Updated classified intel reports saying that the U.S. Department of Energy
00:23:25.420 has assessed that the source of the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a China lab leak.
00:23:32.480 But there is one major caveat.
00:23:35.060 Sources at the Department of Energy tell CNN that the report has, quote, low confidence.
00:23:40.400 Senator, low confidence.
00:23:41.420 I mean, the U.S. Department of Energy assesses that this happened and then they come back and they're like, well, it's low confidence that the COVID-19 likely resulted from a China lab leak. 0.99
00:23:49.680 How much do you have to fall over yourself to look like you're stupid when you're announcing news from the U.S. Department of Energy this way?
00:23:55.980 Well, they're trying desperately to cover their own terrible track record because CNN and The Washington Post and The New York Times refuse to conduct actual journalism. 0.98
00:24:08.180 They repeat left-wing talking points, even if they come directly from the Chinese communist government.
00:24:14.300 Now, it is true that at least according to the leaks, and as I said, I have not seen this intelligence briefing, but according to the leaks,
00:24:22.740 the Energy Department made its judgment with, quote, low confidence.
00:24:26.040 And that's typical in an intelligence briefing that they give you the level of confidence, whether it's low or moderate or high.
00:24:33.880 And so it concluded this was the likely source, but it said with low confidence.
00:24:40.620 You know what CNN didn't say?
00:24:42.780 At least in the segment you played there, they may have acknowledged this elsewhere on CNN, which is the FBI came to the same conclusion.
00:24:51.300 And the FBI has that conclusion with, quote, moderate confidence.
00:24:56.040 So you've got two agencies in the Biden administration that hold this view.
00:25:00.840 One, the Department of Energy that has particular experience and expertise with labs.
00:25:06.880 And the other, the FBI, which you would think would know something about evidence.
00:25:13.200 And nevertheless, just a couple of years ago, saying what the Biden FBI and Biden Energy Department are now reluctantly acknowledging,
00:25:25.340 would get you silenced, blocked, canceled, and ridiculed to high heaven, because, you know, this really ought to be every newsroom that lied about this.
00:25:40.580 Heads should roll.
00:25:41.920 If there actually were responsible editors, if there were responsible owners of papers, the people who lied about this should lose their jobs.
00:25:51.620 As it is, they'll skate by with complete impunity.
00:25:55.700 What about Fauci?
00:25:57.120 And you think some of this maybe is actually coming out now because Fauci's there, no longer there to control the information or the narrative.
00:26:06.960 And I say that as a loaded question, but I want to play audio to back up that theory.
00:26:11.360 Fauci, if you go back to June of 2021, he was on TV.
00:26:18.380 He had the NIH background behind him from Bethesda, Maryland.
00:26:22.140 He was talking on CNN.
00:26:23.820 And this is what he had to say about the lab, the China lab leak theory.
00:26:27.660 He said, quote, it was far out to think that China would, quote, endanger its own people.
00:26:32.420 And then went on to mock people that think this.
00:26:34.240 Listen, I would have the time to go.
00:26:36.160 So that's a moot point.
00:26:37.180 You have had the distinct honor and pleasure of having some of your e-mails, many of your e-mails released to the public over the last few days.
00:26:46.660 And there have been questions or controversy, some ginned up, but some questions raised about some of them.
00:26:52.360 And I want to get you on the record addressing some of them.
00:26:55.520 There was an e-mail sent to you from an executive at EcoHealth Alliance.
00:27:00.940 And this is one of the companies that funded some of the research at the Wuhan lab.
00:27:04.420 And this e-mail thanked you for basically saying you believed that the origins of the coronavirus were natural.
00:27:11.720 This e-mail said, quote, I wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from bat to human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:27:26.920 That e-mail was April 18th.
00:27:29.640 Now, there are some of your critics who say this shows you have too cozy of a relationship with the people behind the Wuhan lab research.
00:27:36.820 What do you say to that?
00:27:38.300 Oh, that's nonsense.
00:27:39.340 I don't even see how they get that from that e-mail.
00:27:41.520 That e-mail was sent to me from them.
00:27:44.080 I have always said, and will say today to you, John, that I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human.
00:27:53.380 But I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason.
00:28:00.700 It could have been a lab leak.
00:28:02.140 I believe if you look historically what happens in the animal-human interface, that in fact the more likelihood is that you're dealing with a jump of species.
00:28:12.420 But I keep an open mind all the time, and that's the reason why I have been public, that we should continue to look for the origin.
00:28:20.920 That e-mail, in no way, you can misconstrue it however you want.
00:28:25.760 That e-mail was from a person to me saying thank you for whatever it is he thought I said.
00:28:32.700 And I said that I think the most likely origin is a jumping of species.
00:28:38.060 I still do think it is at the same time as I'm keeping an open mind that it might be a lab leak.
00:28:45.640 There was an e-mail.
00:28:46.780 Doesn't sound like he's keeping an open mind, does it?
00:28:49.320 Well, the FBI and the Biden Department of Energy have both concluded now that what Fauci just said there is wrong.
00:28:58.400 Not only that, his claim of an open mind, you know what he didn't address?
00:29:02.460 The fact that he asked Zuckerberg to silence anyone that dared say anything contrary to the official line coming from the Chinese communist government.
00:29:09.960 And he tried to orchestrate people in the scientific and medical world to similarly suppress discussion of the evidence that this came from a Chinese lab.
00:29:21.980 It's worth underscoring, this podcast had multiple entire pods devoted to laying out that evidence early in the opening months of this pandemic when CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, none of them could be bothered to report on news.
00:29:40.880 Verdict was there.
00:29:41.680 Let's talk about one other aspect of this, and that is the side of it where many people believe that Fauci lied to Congress.
00:29:52.260 Do you believe that Fauci lied to Congress based on now what we know?
00:29:57.380 And is there any accountability if you do lie to Congress if you're a liberal?
00:30:01.000 Well, on the latter, the answer is no.
00:30:04.540 The chances that the Biden Justice Department will prosecute Fauci for lying to Congress, unfortunately, I think are 0.0%.
00:30:12.320 I have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland whether he intended to prosecute Fauci, and he dodges those questions.
00:30:19.280 He refuses to answer those questions.
00:30:21.380 I've asked the FBI.
00:30:22.760 They dodge those questions.
00:30:24.120 Look, Fauci flat-out told Congress, under oath, that the federal government was not funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology.
00:30:38.200 The NIH, in writing, confirmed that they were funding gain-of-function research.
00:30:47.720 What is gain-of-function research?
00:30:48.980 It is research that alters the characteristic of a virus, makes it, for example, more transmissible, makes it more lethal, makes it more likely to impact humans.
00:31:00.040 All those are the sorts of things that gain-of-function research can do.
00:31:04.200 It is incredibly controversial, and it is incredibly dangerous because you are creating pathogens that can be deadly.
00:31:11.940 And Fauci's answer to Congress is flat-out inconsistent with what the NIH has said publicly in writing.
00:31:21.420 And, by the way, lying to Congress, as Fauci did, is a felony punishable with jail time.
00:31:27.820 But you know what?
00:31:28.900 You can't send him to jail if the Department of Justice, which under our Constitution, it is only the executive branch that can prosecute,
00:31:37.040 if the Biden Department of Justice puts politics above the law and refuses to prosecute him.
00:31:43.480 So I think we should – and listen, the relevance of the gain-of-function research, it's worth noting,
00:31:50.660 is there are huge lessons to be learned going forward.
00:31:57.200 If the entire COVID pandemic is the result of man-made changes to a virus to make it more dangerous to people,
00:32:07.180 that is, number one, a powerful warning to stop screwing around and creating the next horrific pandemic
00:32:14.700 that could result in a much, much higher death toll and potentially millions and millions dead.
00:32:21.240 But, number two, it goes straight to the culpability of the Chinese Communist government.
00:32:27.100 And, you know, the tweet thread that I started this pod reading,
00:32:31.660 I pointed out one of the most damning inference – damning facts –
00:32:36.060 is that we know the Chinese lab destroyed their samples immediately after the pandemic happened.
00:32:42.040 Now, in the criminal justice system, if you destroy evidence,
00:32:48.900 frequently a court or a jury can draw an inference that you are destroying evidence
00:32:54.660 because it implicates you in guilt.
00:32:59.540 It demonstrates destroying evidence, once you know that evidence could be relevant,
00:33:05.780 demonstrates a guilty conscience that you're trying to hide something.
00:33:09.260 And so, at this point, I don't believe there is compelling evidence
00:33:15.820 that China was developing this as a bioweapon, in other words, as something deliberately – 0.70
00:33:21.200 You think it's genuinely an accident is the question I was going to ask you next.
00:33:24.840 You know, what I think is compelling is that it escaped from a Chinese lab.
00:33:31.120 That, I believe, is the overwhelming likely outsource is that it escaped from a Chinese lab.
00:33:39.420 That it was created in a Chinese lab, that they took an existing coronavirus 0.99
00:33:43.760 and enhanced it in the Chinese lab.
00:33:46.260 I believe that is more likely than not.
00:33:48.760 I don't think the evidence is nearly as compelling as it is that it escaped from a Chinese lab.
00:33:53.760 So I think there's some chance this was a naturally occurring virus that escaped from the Chinese lab.
00:33:58.520 I think it is more likely this is a man-made virus that escaped from the Chinese lab. 0.88
00:34:03.280 And I have not seen compelling evidence that even if it was created in a Chinese lab, 0.73
00:34:08.500 that it was created to be a weapon, that it was created to be deliberately released.
00:34:13.500 I think the more likely inference is they were doing research on it.
00:34:19.360 We know that their safety protocols were shoddy.
00:34:22.460 The U.S. State Department said so in wires before the pandemic happened,
00:34:26.580 that they were worried about a coronavirus worldwide pandemic from these labs. 0.66
00:34:32.400 And I think what is likely is they were doing research.
00:34:35.360 They screwed up.
00:34:36.300 They were sloppy.
00:34:37.140 It was an accidental leak.
00:34:38.460 And then China has desperately been trying to cover it up since that happened.
00:34:42.020 And the media and big tech and Democrats have been more than happy to go along with that.
00:34:49.580 I want to talk to you about trust or lack of trust in the American people,
00:34:53.320 the American people may have right now with our government in the future,
00:34:57.500 with other things that happened and pandemics that could happen.
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00:36:34.660 Let's talk about trust, Senator.
00:36:36.600 There's a lot of Americans that do not trust the government.
00:36:39.880 When it comes to health issues now, that worries me
00:36:44.100 because there's going to be something that happens in the future
00:36:46.760 where we're going to need to see leaders that give us intel,
00:36:50.080 give us information that we trust.
00:36:51.620 And it's not just now with this about face from our government saying,
00:36:56.740 OK, the lab leak, yeah, most likely actually came from Wuhan.
00:36:59.980 It was actually out of a lab.
00:37:02.260 The energy department is now saying that.
00:37:04.380 But there's another trust issue here.
00:37:06.420 And I'm going to play Fauci.
00:37:08.160 He went on late night, Stephen Colbert,
00:37:10.760 and he said this back last year in, I think it was September, October.
00:37:15.820 Take a listen.
00:37:16.720 Is the science in on whether the vaccine is safe?
00:37:19.040 Oh, without a doubt.
00:37:20.260 It's been given to billions of people in billions of doses.
00:37:23.220 So there's no doubt.
00:37:24.300 Safety is off the table.
00:37:25.440 There's no doubt.
00:37:26.080 But the important point is that if you reason with people
00:37:30.280 and show the statistics of the number of hospitalizations and deaths
00:37:34.720 among unvaccinated people compared to people who are vaccinated
00:37:38.740 and up to date on their booster,
00:37:40.920 the curves go hospitalization and death for people unvaccinated,
00:37:44.820 hospitalization and deaths for people who are vaccinated.
00:37:48.060 To have people just look at the data,
00:37:49.860 that's not going to convince everybody.
00:37:51.780 But for people who at least put a little bit stock in data,
00:37:55.300 they should understand that.
00:37:56.980 Senator, there's a lot of people asking a lot of questions now
00:37:59.360 about the side effects of the vaccine.
00:38:01.300 I don't think it's crazy to ask that.
00:38:03.340 But when he says the way that he just said it,
00:38:05.980 absolutely it's safe.
00:38:07.120 There's no problems.
00:38:08.340 There's no issues.
00:38:09.280 There's no side effects.
00:38:10.360 This is safe.
00:38:11.500 And now we see people that are coming up with different things
00:38:15.020 that happen after they believe they got the vaccine.
00:38:17.280 There's research into it.
00:38:18.640 How do you expect anybody to trust our government leaders in the future
00:38:22.400 when it comes to public health and public safety issues
00:38:24.860 if this is the type of rhetoric we get from guys like Fauci
00:38:28.100 with no apology ever?
00:38:31.040 I think there is no bureaucrat in the history of the country
00:38:34.300 who has done more damage than Dr. Fauci.
00:38:38.160 I think there is no scientist or doctor in the history of the country
00:38:43.240 who has done more damage to the credibility
00:38:46.700 of the scientific and medical community than Dr. Fauci.
00:38:52.160 His willingness to lie,
00:38:55.940 his willingness to state things as irrefutable facts
00:38:59.560 when the evidence does not back that up,
00:39:01.860 and his willingness to change on a dime
00:39:05.300 as the politics supported it
00:39:08.280 is resulted in millions
00:39:13.300 and maybe even hundreds of millions of Americans
00:39:16.900 who now have deep, deep skepticism
00:39:20.900 for the next thing some government doctor tells them.
00:39:24.780 Now, that could have devastating effects.
00:39:30.020 Look, God forbid we have a pandemic of something like,
00:39:33.180 you know, I don't know, Ebola or something
00:39:34.900 that has an incredibly high fatality rate
00:39:37.400 and could, if it began spreading in serious numbers,
00:39:42.100 could result in massive numbers of death.
00:39:45.900 Given the enormous skepticism people have
00:39:50.040 because they've seen Fauci lying and lying and lying
00:39:52.880 and being certain of his lies at every step,
00:39:55.980 I worry about how we're going to deal
00:39:58.840 with the next major threat.
00:40:00.800 And I don't understand why Fauci couldn't have said,
00:40:03.700 look, in my judgment,
00:40:06.600 the benefits of taking the vaccine exceed the cost.
00:40:10.640 That was his judgment.
00:40:11.860 That's fine to say if he wants to say that.
00:40:14.120 If he wanted to say,
00:40:15.480 if you're in a particularly vulnerable population,
00:40:17.380 if you're very elderly,
00:40:18.680 if you're immunocompromised,
00:40:20.660 he could say in his judgment,
00:40:22.620 the benefits of taking the vaccine
00:40:24.300 substantially exceed the costs and risks.
00:40:27.960 That's actually how a reasonable scientist
00:40:30.560 or doctor advises you.
00:40:32.080 That's how someone who's not being a propagandist
00:40:34.740 advises you.
00:40:36.080 Now, he would have to at the same time say,
00:40:39.040 well, the data for children,
00:40:41.760 for toddlers to take the vaccine,
00:40:45.340 the risks we know from the COVID virus
00:40:49.060 are very low for young children,
00:40:51.800 and the risks are unknown.
00:40:54.480 That would actually be an honest assessment,
00:40:57.280 but he wouldn't say that
00:40:58.740 because he has decided not to be in the business
00:41:02.400 of giving honest and fair assessments,
00:41:04.380 and it's the danger of the boy who cried wolf.
00:41:08.260 He's the boy who cried COVID,
00:41:10.780 and the consequence,
00:41:12.580 the next person at the CDC,
00:41:15.420 the next government scientist,
00:41:16.840 the next crisis we have,
00:41:20.780 we may see a whole lot of people die
00:41:24.300 because our government has destroyed
00:41:28.200 much of the credibility
00:41:29.480 of their own medical and scientific teams,
00:41:32.400 and I think Fauci is directly responsible for that.
00:41:35.640 Senator, I know there's a lot of Americans
00:41:37.480 that are certainly hoping that the Republicans,
00:41:40.200 at least leading in the House side,
00:41:42.060 will be able to look into this,
00:41:43.840 investigate, get some real answers,
00:41:46.380 and have some accountability
00:41:47.520 for those that are working for our government
00:41:50.380 that we pay with our tax dollars.
00:41:52.960 They want there to be some accountability here,
00:41:55.120 so they don't just get to walk around
00:41:56.520 and make things up as they go based on politics.
00:41:59.060 Look, I think it's incredibly important
00:42:00.840 that there be accountability.
00:42:02.120 I think it's important that Congress hold hearings.
00:42:04.780 I'm on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:42:06.420 I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
00:42:08.340 Both committees ought to be holding hearings on this,
00:42:12.000 examining the origins of COVID,
00:42:14.620 examining the liability
00:42:16.500 of the communist Chinese government
00:42:19.680 for potentially creating this virus,
00:42:22.280 for at a minimum negligently allowing it to escape,
00:42:25.180 and for covering up the evidence
00:42:26.800 and resulting in the loss of millions of lives
00:42:29.700 and trillions of dollars.
00:42:31.760 There should be real liability.
00:42:33.460 That means Congress needs to hold them to account.
00:42:36.040 I have no confidence Democrats in the Senate
00:42:37.920 will be willing to do so,
00:42:38.980 but I'm hopeful that at least the Republican majority
00:42:42.240 in the House will.
00:42:43.440 You know, I'll point out one other data point,
00:42:45.560 which all of the media outlets
00:42:49.200 that insisted for years
00:42:53.760 this couldn't have come from a lab leak,
00:42:55.980 just one data point,
00:42:59.060 which is three researchers
00:43:02.260 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology
00:43:05.920 became sick in November of 2019.
00:43:11.820 So before the pandemic was known,
00:43:14.680 before the outbreak had widely occurred,
00:43:16.880 and they became sick enough
00:43:18.440 that they sought hospital care.
00:43:23.360 And at least according to public reports,
00:43:27.040 the sick researchers were directly involved
00:43:30.820 in coronavirus research.
00:43:33.800 That's pretty compelling
00:43:35.140 when you've got three researchers
00:43:36.800 checking themselves into the hospital
00:43:39.100 in November of 2019,
00:43:41.360 right before this pandemic erupts across the globe.
00:43:45.400 And yet, even that fact
00:43:47.800 didn't cause Fauci to blink,
00:43:49.560 didn't cause the media to blink,
00:43:51.060 didn't cause big tech to blink.
00:43:52.600 And elevating politics
00:43:55.820 above people's lives
00:43:59.080 and above truth
00:44:00.140 is one of the reasons
00:44:02.480 that so many have died,
00:44:06.200 but it's also one of the reasons
00:44:07.520 why so many now deeply distrust
00:44:11.160 so-called government experts.
00:44:13.240 Yeah, many people may forget
00:44:14.540 we were heading into
00:44:15.900 a presidential election season
00:44:17.680 when all of this went down
00:44:19.540 and it was a candidate
00:44:20.700 and a Republican Party
00:44:21.820 that was thriving
00:44:22.580 with their policies
00:44:23.900 and it was,
00:44:24.920 many saw it as an opportunity
00:44:26.500 to really knock on Trump
00:44:28.560 and other Republicans
00:44:29.460 in that election coming up.
00:44:32.380 I will say one other thing,
00:44:33.520 don't forget,
00:44:34.500 this is why we do this show
00:44:36.300 so that we give you these clips
00:44:37.740 and info
00:44:38.420 that you're not going to get anywhere else.
00:44:40.520 This is one of those shows
00:44:41.440 I'll ask you,
00:44:42.140 make sure you share it
00:44:43.100 with your family and your friends.
00:44:44.500 Many of the clips
00:44:45.520 that we played,
00:44:46.200 the piece of audio here,
00:44:47.440 you're not going to hear it anywhere else.
00:44:49.420 So share it
00:44:50.500 with your family and friends.
00:44:51.600 Write us a five-star review as well
00:44:53.020 and we'll see you back here
00:44:53.960 in a couple of days.
00:44:56.080 This is an iHeart Podcast.
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