Episode Details

This is Toby Sumpter with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, June 3, 2021.

Fourth of July Club Member Liberty Bash

Join us at our first annual 4th of July Club Member Liberty Bash! We are so grateful to our club members, and can’t think of a better way to celebrate America, than a joyous, raucous, party with our club members at Waterboy’s farm.

Unfortunately, space is limited, so sign up ASAP. Ok pay attention, here is how you register: Go to www.FightLaughFeast.com and login into the club portal and you will find the 4th of July event. Click on it and follow the registration steps from there. If you have forgotten your password, just go through the fast and easy password reset process. If you get stuck, email us at contact@FightLauhgFeast.com.

The event is free, though we would gladly accept donations to cover some costs. Our software is a little funny, so just note that you have to put in a 0 (zero) into the price box at checkout to move forward.

Dr. Fauci is in Hot Water

Let’s begin with an exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci from around May 11. 

Just so you know what’s going on, “gain of function” according to the National Institute of Health is “experimentation that aims or is expected to (and/or, perhaps, actually does) increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens. Such research, when conducted by responsible scientists, usually aims to improve understanding of disease causing agents, their interaction with human hosts, and/or their potential to cause pandemics.

So here’s Rand Paul sparring with Dr. Fauci last month:

Play Audio: 0:00- 1:18

And now…

As part of a FOIA request from BuzzFeed, more than 3,000 emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s inbox were published online late Tuesday night.

These emails bring many interesting revelations to light. For example, zoologist Peter Daszak once thanked Fauci for pushing back on the theory that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). At the time, Daszak was especially interested in killing the story since his non-profit had previously steered U.S. funding to the WIV.

“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak wrote to Fauci on April 19, 2020.

“From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’s origins,” Daszak goes on.

Daszak was correct in that Fauci’s public rejection of the lab-leak theory did dispel the conversation. Once Fauci and like-minded politicians called the theory a conspiracy promulgated by then-president Donald Trump, the story was banned from social media and anyone who dared to bring it up was dismissed as a dangerous conspirator who probably supports QAnon.

However, Daszak was also wrong because the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 originated from the WIV is not a myth. Mounting evidence suggests the virus did not originate from a Chinese wet market, the story we were told to believe for over a year.

Between 2014 and 2019, EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak’s organization, funneled $3.4 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the WIV to study coronaviruses in bats. The five-year grant was renewed for a total of $3.7 million in 2019, but then canceled in April 2020 when Donald Trump said the research didn’t align with the NIH’s “program goals and agency priorities.”

What was that money actually used for? Fauci says that funding did not go to what is known as “gain of function” research, which takes a virus that could infect humans and makes it more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.