Republican Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky appeared in Fox News's “America Reports,” co-hosted by Sandra Smith on Tuesday, March 21.
Paul said he is not getting help from Democrats to access unclassified information. He believes the virus came from a lab. He said: People Who Are Saying Covid Didn’t Come from a Lab Are ‘Self-Interested.’
Paul said, "Tony Fauci approved and gave the money to the lab in Wuhan. So by approving that he has and shares some culpability in the origins of this virus, so he's always going to deny that it came from the lab because it comes back to his reputation for having incredibly poor judgment to send this money to Wuhan."
Here's the video:
Here's the full transcript:
SANDRA SMITH: Three years later, I mean, while Beijing is still stonewalling and blocking any information about the origins of COVID-19. But Republican Senator Rand Paul says it's not just China. It's also the U.S. government obstructing the truth. But now President Biden has signed that bipartisan legislation to declassify intel. So will that help us get to the bottom of this? Senator Rand Paul joins us now. He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator, welcome to you, and thanks for joining us on the program today. Will we eventually get to the bottom of this so many years after this pandemic started?
RAND PAUL: Well, you know, we had a unanimous vote in the Senate, a unanimous vote in the House, and then President Biden begrudgingly signed it.
And when he signed it, he said, yeah, I'll give you the information as long as I determine that it's not going to hurt our national security, which is concerning that he's already putting a caveat on how much he's going to give us.
I can also tell you that much of the information I'm asking for is unclassified already. I have 30 letters to eight different government agencies. So far, I have no Democrats signing on to help me get any of this information.
I've approached four Democrat chairmen, and most of the information is unclassified, but they refuse to give it. So this is a real problem. And it's a real problem because, look, a million Americans died, and we have yet to have any investigations into the origin.
Even though the FBI, the Department of Energy, the Lancet Commission, and also an investigation over a year-long investigation by the Health Committee all came to the same conclusion that, in all likelihood, this came from a lab.
SANDRA SMITH: I mean, we've got it up on the screen, the lab leak theory. The Energy Department is on board with that. The FBI is on board, but it's the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The NIAID. They say it's nature. CDC says it came from nature. And those that say origins are still unclear are the CIA and the intel community. And you just mentioned the implications for our national security a moment ago.
And, Senator, I can't imagine what's worse than our intel community saying, you know, we might not ever really know where this came from. Dr. Fauci, we might never know. We should demand to know. Right?
RAND PAUL: But the people of America should realize that the people saying it didn't come from a lab are self-interested. Tony Fauci approved and gave the money to the lab in Wuhan. So by approving that he has and shares some culpability in the origins of this virus, so he's always going to deny that it came from the lab because it comes back to his reputation for having incredibly poor judgment to send this money to Wuhan.
But it's the same for the CDC and the NAID. They're all apparatchiks of Fauci. They've all been handpicked by him over decades. And so, really, the machinery of government over there is biased. And they're never going to admit to this.
But if you talk to the real scientists and there are dozens and dozens of eminent virologists now who have come to the conclusion this came from the lab also, my goodness, even if it were a chance, why wouldn't we want to reform our policy, so we don't fund this dangerous research?
To this day, this dangerous research still happens in twelve different labs in the United States that I know of.
SANDRA SMITH: And Senator, it seems that some of the only people that are paying the ultimate consequences of this is our nation's children.
They are paying the very long-term consequences of those shutdowns of those school closures. And it continues to show up. I've got a brand new report in my hands. This is from a group that looks into this under the Wall Street Journal. Wirepoints has new report cards for Illinois. This is one state, the 20 largest school districts in Illinois, where it is now revealed, Senator, just 30% of Illinois students are reading at grade level. Only 26% are proficient in math. And it's even worse for minority students. Just 18% of Hispanic students and only 12% of black students statewide can read at grade level. But you know what is even more shocking when you dig through these, they're graduating, these kids, seniors in high school, they're graduating 95% of them. And only about 40% to 45% of them are reading at grade level. So they're graduating them, and they can't read or write.
RAND PAUL: This is a horror. The lockdowns didn't save any lives, but they damaged our children, particularly the least among us. Those who live in poverty, those who have difficult family circumstances, homeschooling your kids I'm all for, but everybody can't do it. And some weren't able to do this for their kids. And we lost a year or two of education, and some of these kids will never catch up again. But it also did not work. Everybody got COVID eventually, and it wasn't effective.
The countries like Sweden that didn't lock down, their kids went to school every day. Not one kid died in Sweden. So this was a fallacy promoted by Tony Fauci and the establishment of government. And it was wrong. It didn't save any lives, and we should never do it again.
SANDRA SMITH: Senator, appreciate you joining us today. It's tough stuff. And the American people, they look on, and they want accountability. They want answers, and it's tough to hear from government officials that we might never know the origins of that deadly virus. Thank you very much.
RAND PAUL: We’re not done. We're not done.
SANDRA SMITH: Got it. All right, Senator, come on back soon. Thank you.
