President Donald Trump blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday, accusing the longtime public health official of promoting disastrous COVID-19 policies, shielding China from blame, and wielding harmful influence during the pandemic as Fauci prepared to testify before the Senate.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump defended his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak while contrasting it with Joe Biden’s record, arguing that the United States suffered far more COVID-19 deaths during Biden’s presidency than during his own first term.

The president praised Operation Warp Speed, describing the initiative as “a SPECTACULAR SUCCESS,” and declaring that it was “one of the most successful things ever done by an American President.”

Trump also reiterated his longstanding belief that the coronavirus originated at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, saying he believed that from the very beginning and accusing Fauci of repeatedly trying to discredit that conclusion.

“I said from the beginning that the Virus came from the Wuhan Laboratory in China,” Trump wrote. “Fauci strongly disagreed, always trying to protect China.”

Trump went on to say that he increasingly ignored Fauci’s recommendations during his presidency, criticizing the infectious disease expert’s shifting guidance on masks and his calls for broader government shutdowns.

“I overrode Fauci on this. His ideas were CRAZY!” Trump wrote. “I went the Federalist way, and let the governors decide. The Republican governors did a much better job than the Dumocrats.”

The president further claimed that after the 2020 election, he cautioned Biden against relying on Fauci, but said the warning went unheeded and that Fauci instead was given “vast destructive power.”

Trump’s comments came just hours before Fauci was scheduled to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee after being subpoenaed by Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Paul has spent years examining the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including whether U.S.-funded research conducted in China played any role in the outbreak.

Ahead of the hearing, the Kentucky senator released more than 1,000 pages from Fauci’s personal pandemic diary, contending that the documents reveal discrepancies between Fauci’s private views and the statements he made publicly during the health crisis.

Fauci’s legal team has dismissed Paul’s accusations as “absolutely baseless,” while more than 150 infectious disease experts signed a public letter backing the retired physician and calling on Congress to halt what they characterized as politically driven investigations.

A major focus of the hearing was expected to be whether National Institutes of Health funding routed through EcoHealth Alliance helped finance coronavirus research at a Wuhan laboratory that critics have argued involved dangerous experiments.

Fauci has consistently denied that NIH funding supported experiments capable of creating the virus responsible for the pandemic, maintaining that the available scientific evidence points more convincingly to a natural origin than to a laboratory leak.

{Matzav.com}