Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) took on the GOP’s “show trial” with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday as he called out Republicans’ “campaign against science and facts” since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Republicans are eager to rebrand you as a villain in order to extract from their own failure to protect Americans from soaring healthcare costs…,” said Blumenthal in remarks during the contentious GOP-led hearing.
“From unsafe food, which has caused cyclospora to spread; and [a resurgence] in measles as a result of the anti-vaccine policies.”
Blumenthal said the hearing was “the culmination of a yearslong crusade” against Fauci that began when the ex-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases “dared to contradict” President Donald Trump’s false Covid claims.
“For the past 18 months, the Trump administration has been engaged in a campaign to rewrite this history. Today’s proceeding, I fear, is part of that effort,” he said.
“One of the darkest days in our Senate’s history.”
He went on to argue that the administration has launched a “baseless set of smears” against vaccines and attacked first responders, healthcare workers, as well as medical researchers who battled the virus.
“Today’s hearing is another page in that playbook, sadly, tragically,” he said.
The comments from Blumenthal — a minority member of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee — arrived in a hearing that saw Fauci come face-to-face with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the panel’s chair who has accused the infectious disease expert of lying about the pandemic.
Fauci, who repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during the hearing, used his opening statement to slam Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with wanting to put him “behind bars.”
Blumenthal praised Fauci for his contributions to the fight against COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, H1N1, Ebola virus and other efforts during his nearly four decades of service at the NIH.
He later called out Republicans over their “continuing vendetta against a single individual.”
He concluded, “America deserves better.”