Stand-up Comedy at Its Best: Fauci Claims He's 'Always Had an Open Mind' About the Origins of COVID

I'm not sure who's the biggest liar in the Democrat Party, but I'm pretty sure that former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with serial-lying Joe Biden, would be in the "Lying Liars Telling Lying Liar Lies" finals if such a competition were held. Man, I'd do pay-per-view to watch that.

Anyway, cast your mind back a couple of years to a time when the COVID Gnome™ came absolutely unglued when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) repeatedly called out his lies during Senate hearings. And remember when Dr. "I am the Science" derisively called the Wuhan lab leak theory "a shiny object?"

Welp, that's where today's episode of "Lying with Tony" begins.

During a Thursday appearance on NBC's “Mehdi Hasan Show,” Fauci absurdly claimed he's always had an open mind on the origins of COVID-19 and that his previous comments referring to the lab leak theory as a “shiny object” — multiple times — were about people claiming the lab leak was definitely true without evidence.

Incorrect, doc. You derisively mocked the mere possibility and arrogantly dismissed questions about it out of hand, remember? Yeah, so do we.

Fauci told Hasan:

I think if you go back, Mehdi, it wasn’t a dismissal. It was my opinion of what I felt was the most likely cause of the outbreak. I had always had an open mind, always have. I didn’t articulate, by the way, I have an open mind. I just was very open—

Hasan cut him off.

You went on Newt Gingrich’s podcast and said these are ‘conspiracy theories’ and you said, in private, to Francis Collins, this is a ‘shiny object’ — referring to the lab leak — ‘that will go away’ in time.

No sweat for Fauci — he continued to lie:

Well, no, of course, again, you’ve got to put it into context. … [I]t’s really in the context. If you look at someone who immediately says, it’s a lab leak, without any data, it’s a lab leak, as opposed to looking at the context of, going back, the original SARS clearly turned out to be from a bat, to an intermediate host, to a human. MERS, bat, intermediate host, to a human.

Uh-huh. And if you immediately dismiss the lab leak theory without any data to the contrary, what's that? Please.

Again, Hasan reminded Fauci that he repeatedly called the lab leak notion a conspiracy theory, to which the "good" doctor replied:

But when people make an absolute statement with no evidence whatsoever, I have to question why are you making that statement. You can say it’s a possibility that it’s that, but if you come and say, no, it’s this, with no data. That’s the context that gets confused.
What I was saying early on was that, if you look at the information that you have experienced evolutionary virologists who have no skin in the game … they honestly say that it isn’t definitive. And that’s the reason why we keep an open mind. Once you get definitive proof, I and all of my colleagues, I assure you, will embrace that.

Nonsense. Again.

Speaking of Fauci's Lies, One More Word: Masks.

Fauci wrote in a series of emails in 2020 that store-bought masks were ineffective at protecting people from the COVID virus. In one such email, in response to an email from Sylvia Burwell — believed to be the Sylvia Burwell who was with Health and Human Services under Barack Obama —Fauci wrote in February 2020:

Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.
The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out [the] virus, which is small enough to pass through [the] material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep [sic] out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.

Fauci added: "I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low-risk location."

Why, ain't that somethin'?