At a Thursday press conference, White House press secretary Jen Psaki shut down a dubious line of questioning from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy about whether Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health would be keeping his job. Doocy brought this topic up because of recent reporting from The Intercept casting doubt on assertions from Fauci that U.S. public health authorities had never funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at a Chinese lab in the area where COVID-19 was first recorded. As Psaki explained, however, the National Institutes of Health has already roundly refuted the premise of this reporting from The Intercept. Non-experts drawing conclusions from information with which they’re previously unfamiliar and touting their conclusions as gospel does nobody any favors.
Doocy began by asking as follows:
‘First, on COVID origins. You’ve said from that podium that under no circumstance would President Biden ever fire Dr. Fauci. Is that still the case, since Fauci told Congress the NIH never funded gain-of-function research for coronaviruses in Wuhan, but documents published by The Intercept suggest that is not true, which would mean that he misled Congress.’
As Psaki put it in response:
‘First I would say that NIH has refuted that reporting, and I would point you to that. But let me give you some highlights of that. NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans. A reminder that there are previous and different coronaviruses than the existing one we’re battling. And the body of science produced by this research demonstrates that the bat coronavirus sequences published from that work NIH supported were not… the… COVID-2 strain, so what [Fauci] said [to Congress] was correct.’
Asked a follow-up question of whether Fauci’s job is “safe,” Psaki succinctly replied:
‘Correct.’
Check out the interaction between Doocy and Psaki below:
Peter Doocy asks Jen Psaki if Biden is considering firing Dr Fauci pic.twitter.com/Ta4BgnyEky
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 9, 2021
