During a House Select Committee on the Coronavirus hearing on Monday, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) slammed attacks against Dr. Anthony Fauci about his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I now recognize Mr. Mfume from Maryland for five minutes of questions.
00:07 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
00:08 And by the way, no, we don't have it.
00:12 So I get tired of hearing, "We've got it," and then when we ask for it, it's not there.
00:17 We do not have it, Dr. Fauci, and for everyone watching this, that's just incorrect.
00:22 Now, let me just say a couple of things.
00:24 If I sound a little outraged, it's because, you know, we sit here and we watch one conspiracy
00:30 theory after another get debunked.
00:33 And if I might, on a point of personal privilege, to the gentleman from New York who wanted
00:38 to argue that we should be worrying about testing of human medicines on animals.
00:42 If this committee really wants to do something, let's talk about the most infamous biomedical
00:47 research study in the United States, the Tuskegee study, where 400 black men in this country
00:53 were injected deliberately with syphilis and allowed to die slowly over a 40-year period
00:59 without any attempt to help them at all.
01:02 It was condoned by the U.S. Public Health Service.
01:04 If we want to talk about testing, let's talk about that as well.
01:12 I'm going to talk about COVID right now.
01:15 Mr. Chairman, I have the floor, Mr. Chairman.
01:19 I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman -- I ask you to suspend, please.
01:25 I want to remind the audience of decorum.
01:30 Recognize Mr. Mfume.
01:31 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
01:35 I want to thank you and Ranking Member Ruiz for this opportunity.
01:40 Dr. Fauci, we owe you an apology for the way we have run you through the mud, and none
01:48 of us have said to you, "Here's where you go to get your good name and your reputation
01:53 back."
01:54 It's the most unfair thing I have seen.
01:56 If there were evidence, if there were facts that supported the charges, I, like everybody
02:01 else, would be interested, but we haven't seen a damn thing to suggest that these accusations
02:07 are accurate.
02:08 You've been a hero to many for 54 years, five-plus decades.
02:13 You helped lead this country through the anthrax scare, through AIDS, through Zika, through
02:18 Ebola, through SARS, and through COVID-19, pandemics, and epidemics.
02:23 We owe you a collective thank you.
02:25 You are a world-renowned scientist and an American patriot.
02:30 And whether or not people want to believe that, that's on them, but those facts are
02:34 undisputable.
02:35 For a year and a half, the Republican majority on this committee has sought to weaponize
02:40 genuine scientific questions over COVID-19 and to vilify, vilify our public health officials
02:48 and our nation's scientists with unsubstantiated, with baseless, with allegations that just
02:54 can't stand the light of day.
02:56 And so they've tried to do that with COVID-19, and we are here now as a result of the aggregated
03:04 amount of foolishness that has taken place.
03:08 And I've always said to this committee, every time I've had a chance to speak, let's go
03:12 back to when we were in the heart of the pandemic, when our family members and friends and coworkers
03:18 were dying left and right, when we were afraid to get near anybody, when we wanted to wash
03:24 down our groceries before we brought them into the house, where we were willing to put
03:28 on masks or headgear if it would keep us from being infected.
03:32 And we turned to our leaders and public health officials and scientists for answers.
03:38 And we got some, but then we didn't get some.
03:41 And then we got some later, like Dr. Deborah Birx, who was Donald Trump's expert on the
03:47 virus, who said, no, bleach won't do it.
03:52 Don't inject yourself with it.
03:54 And who also said publicly on the record that thousands of American lives could have been
03:59 spared, spared if we had done what we were being told to do by the scientific community.
04:07 At least one thing is clear.
04:10 Those 1 million people who died as a result of these conspiracy theories will never come
04:16 back.
04:17 And those families have empty seats at the table year after year.
04:22 And we do a disservice.
04:23 At the very least, we don't acknowledge their deaths and the harm and the hurt that has
04:28 been done to their families and learn, learn how to find a way to trust science going forward
04:34 in this country.
04:36 Dr. Fauci, you've been accused over and over again of going to the CIA headquarters and
04:44 sitting down and having a meeting with the CIA to construct a way to make sure that COVID
04:51 raged in this country.
04:54 Is that correct?
04:56 That is incorrect.
04:57 Dr. Fauci, have you been to the CIA office in the last 20 years or headquarters?
05:04 I went to the CIA decades ago during the anthrax attacks to discuss the possibility of terrorist
05:12 attacks.
05:14 Thank you.
05:15 I want to I wanted to get that on the record because that's just the latest theory now
05:19 that you and the CIA director conspired.
05:22 This is foolishness.
05:24 People are not going to agree with you.
05:25 I understand that.
05:27 But we take and besmirch somebody's good name.
05:30 Think about if it were one of us, we'd be jumping up and down trying to find a way to
05:35 get justice.
05:36 And so on behalf of those of us who are thankful, who are part of many in a grateful nation,
05:42 thank you for your service, sir.
05:43 I yield back.
05:45 And I'll recognize Mr. Cloud from Texas for five minutes of questions.