MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace said Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s newly disclosed emails makes him “look good” and he passes “the test” that many would fail.
The journalist made the comments during an interview with President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser following the public release of a trove of Fauci’s email correspondence during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic via the Freedom of Information Act. The previously unseen messages revealed chatter about the Wuhan lab leak theory, masks, and some apparent contradictory remarks from the doctor, drawing ire from his critics on the Right.
“The true mark of someone is if they look good even when their personal emails come out, so you pass the test very few of us would pass,” Wallace told Fauci in an interview.
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Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has come under fire after the messages showed he worked behind the scenes to cast doubt on the Wuhan lab leak possibility in favor of the hypothesis of the natural origin. More recently, he publicly said he supported further investigation in a departure from his dismissal of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis last year.
The emails also showed Fauci, the highest-paid government employee, questioning whether masks were “really effective” at stemming the pandemic, while separate communication showed the medical authority lauding his time in the national spotlight.
In one April 2020 exchange, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a research group that secured a grant to perform coronavirus research in Wuhan before the pandemic, wrote to Fauci “to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators” after Fauci dismissed the idea that the pandemic started due to a lab accident in Wuhan.
Fauci replied to the email, which came on April 18, 2020, to thank Daszak for his “kind note.” Earlier in the day, Fauci was asked directly about the lab leak hypothesis during a coronavirus briefing, and he said the scientific evidence “is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
On Wednesday, Fauci addressed criticism over his behavior during the Trump-era, insisting “science is a dynamic process,” and he always sought to “tell the truth.”
“I mean there’s no doubt that there are people out there that for one reason or another resent me for what I did in the last administration, which was not anything that was anti-Trump at all,” he told Wallace. “It was just trying to get the right information, trying to get the right data and what they didn’t understand…is that science is a dynamic process.”
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“Something that you know in January, you make a recommendation or a comment about it, but as you get more and more information, the information leads you to change because that’s what science is, it’s a self-correcting process … And that’s what I was trying to do — is to always tell the truth on the basis of what the data is,” he added.
The email dump has spurred criticism from lawmakers such as Sen. Rand Paul who called for the doctor’s firing on Wednesday.
“Told you,” the Kentucky Republican posted on Twitter, along with the hashtag #FireFauci. “Can’t wait to see the media try to spin the Fauci FOIA emails.”
