MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday delivered an impassioned defense of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment during his testimony at a congressional hearing on the origins of COVID-19, pushing back against Republican attacks.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic, declined to answer questions from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Instead, he said in an opening statement that he had already addressed the issues in previous congressional hearings and interviews. He pointed to what he described as Paul’s “obsession” with prosecuting him.
O’Donnell pulled no punches in his assessment of the hearing.
“Republican senators disgraced themselves today, attacking the man who saved lives, possibly millions of lives during the COVID-19 outbreak. The man who helped speed the development of a vaccine because of the research that he had led and supported on exactly that kind of virus for years before the outbreak of the pandemic in anticipation of exactly the kind of pandemic that hit the world in 2020.”
“That’s why that vaccine that has saved so many of our lives reached us so quickly. And not one senator in that room today did one thing to save a single life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not one of them. But they lined up to get their COVID-19 vaccine shots as soon as they possibly could, and they never thanked Dr. Fauci for helping speed the development of that vaccine.”
Later, O’Donnell argued that Americans “owe our gratitude” to Fauci and that “many of us may owe our lives” to him, adding that Fauci “owes nothing to Republicans in the United States Senate.”
“He does not owe them an answer to a single question,” O’Donnell said. “He’s already answered every one of the questions that they were throwing around that room today. He’s answered them many times in congressional testimony and in other interviews. Every one of them, every one of those questions he’s answered in previous appearances.”
He concluded: “Sometimes news stories come down to a very simple right and wrong, and this is one of them. Anthony Fauci is right, and every one of those Republican senators is very, very wrong.”
Watch O’Donnell’s full commentary here: