Morning Wire - Former CDC Director Breaks Silence on Fauci

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield is breaking his silence on his former colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci and the origins of the virus. Redfield joins Morning Wire to discuss why he believed from the beginning that COVID-19 came from a laboratory, the evidence he says points to genetic engineering, Fauci’s role in funding research connected to the Wuhan lab, and what he witnessed as scientists and others were censored for questioning the official narrative. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3028- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Quince - Upgrade your everyday. Go to https://Quince.com/WIRE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns Trust & Will - Trust & Will. Affordable estate plans. Priceless peace of mind. Go to https://TrustAndWill.com/WIRE and get 20% off.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Five years on from the COVID pandemic, shocking details continue to come to light about the degree to which the American people were misled and information was suppressed. Once we knew that this was engineered to infect humans, we should have known we were in a race. In today's episode, we sit down with former CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, to discuss his first experience working with Dr. Fauci during the peak of the hysteria. Dr. Redfield shares why he believed from the start that the virus came from a lab, but that information was covered up.

I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC. Dr. Redfield, thanks for coming on. Thank you very much for having me. So you were serving as the head of the CDC when the COVID pandemic broke out and you also worked closely with Dr. Fauci before that. What was that experience like?

Well, I had worked with Tony all the way back in the 1980s and AIDS. I was the CDC director when he was the director of biology infectious disease. So I was the CDC director all during the pandemic and a member of the White House Task Force. So I gave my professional opinion in January of 2020 that I felt that this was a, non-natural occurring virus that was a consequence of scientific research in a laboratory. And I shared that with the president and the committee. Tony took the position that it was from nature, from the wet market. I think there was a lot of evidence that that was not correct.

And he's a very smart individual, so I believe that he actually understood that that wasn't correct. and he intentionally helped create what I call a roost that it came from the wet market, largely because NIH was involved along with other government agencies of actually funding that laboratory to do this research, which then ended up killing 20 million people. He was a big advocate of gain of function research where you're trying to make pathogens more pathogenic and more transmissible. I was a big advocate of not doing gain of function research. I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a number of years ago,

really pushing our nation not to be involved in gain-of-function research. President Trump just recently put another moratorium on greater-functioning research that's really important now if it can be enforced. Fauci wrote an op-ed in 2012 where he talked about the importance of gain-of-function research and why that research had to go forward. And in that op-ed, he said that if the consequence of doing this research is it results in a major pandemic, it's worth the risk. Well, the reality is it did result in a major pandemic. Now, you mentioned that there was evidence to suggest this virus did not emerge, you know, organically.

What evidence was there? As a virologist, there's clear evidence. Actually, in the genome of the virus itself. So if you really understand how to read the genome, you can really find out that, wait a minute, it just didn't come for nature. For example, as Ray and Paul talked about, there's a fiorine cleaver site in this virus, and what that does is it splits the protein

so that the binding domain of the virus now preferably recognizes the human receptor, but doesn't recognize the bat receptor. And when you look at those 12 nucleotides, they code for four amino acids, and the amino acid nucleotide sequence that they use actually you can have different triplets for different amino acids. And the triplet sequence that are used in this virus are the triplet sequence that is preferred by humans, not bad.

So how does a human preferred sequence for, say, arginine, how does that get in this virus? It used to be classified. It's declassified now. But when I reviewed this with Pompeo, who is Secretary of State, he asked me to help interpret all this data in his office. under classified conditions. And as I said, now it's declassified, but I told Pompeo that, you know, my view, that was a smoking gun. I mean, that cleavage sequence doesn't belong there. And there's a lot of other issues. Delivermore laboratory virologist did a really good job dissecting the genome and showing how there's also changes in the genome that knock out what we call the interferon response

element. And so what that does is when you get this virus all of a sudden, you're not going to get sick, okay? Which, you know, if you have the inter-reference response element triggered, you're getting symptoms like you do for the flu. Well, they knocked it out. And then they knocked out several other areas of the virus that would allow your body to develop what we call an immunodominent response, immune response, which would mean that you wouldn't get the virus again. All right? So this is why you can get COVID over and over and over again. I just wrote a book called Redfield's Warning, which I also encourage your readers to read.

In that book, I talk a lot about the mistakes that we were made and I acknowledge them. And that was a mistake. In retrospect, that was a mistake. That was a mistake. And that's what I was hoping Tony would do. He said, you know, I did the best I could, you know, under the circumstances. But in retrospect, I was wrong about that.

I was wrong about that. And I want to apologize to people that were harmed by some of my recommendations. I mean, I'm just sad that he didn't take advantage of being able to take responsibility for his decisions and recommendations. Be humble and realize, you know, hey, we all got things wrong. Do you think part of his unwillingness to testify in Congress could be because he's covering up his own direct role in, you know, helping fund this Wuhan lab that appears to have artificially created the virus, not just an unwillingness. to accept blame. I can't believe it's already August, which means a few more weeks of glorious summer before we start thinking about cooler weather and layers. And it's the perfect time to stock up on classic items that can take you from summer through fall. And Quince specializes in effortless

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Trust and will.com slash wire. Yeah, I think there's no doubt that there's a lot of protection there. I mean, more so than funding it, did fund it, okay, and he funded the scientists that helped make it happen, Ralph Barrett and North Carolina and others. But it is important to acknowledge that the Defense Department also funded it, USAID funded it, the State Department funded it, and Fauci's Institute funded it. And actually, if you look at those, Fauci's Institute was much of a less funder than some of the others. USAID was a huge funder. I always said, you know, from the very beginning when I made it clear in January of 2020 that I thought this virus came from the laboratory. And it wasn't that I was some type of genius.

If you just looked at the literature, the woman scientists in that laboratory published in 2014 in the medical literature, she published that she actually finally taught a coronavirus how to infect humanized mice through the HCH2 receptor. Okay. So we know. they knew how to do that. One thing that's true is when we got SARS and it came in in 2002, 2003, it only was very difficult to go human to human. So even though now, you know, 20-something years later, there's been less than 10,000 cases of SARS. Because the SARS virus never learned how to go efficiently human to human. When MERS came in in 2012, 2013, it went from a bat to a can. and then from a camel into humans.

And it also never learned how to go human to human. So very well, very efficiently. So there's still a less than 10,000 cases of SARS too. So it takes these viruses a long time to learn how to be efficient human-to-human transmitters. But when COVID came, it was immediately, if you remember, the pictures we saw in November and December and Wuhan, China, there was hundreds of thousands of people infected immediately. If you take that virus now, you'll find out it doesn't hardly infect bats, but it infects humans. So it was engineered, and this is where he was disingenuous, because it would have made a difference.

I argued once we knew that this was engineered to infect humans, we should have known we were in a race. Because this virus was going to go through variant after variant after variant. You know, the vaccines that we were developed were not going to prevent infection. So when President Biden and Fauci said, get your grandchildren and vaccinated so they don't infect grandma, that was not a true statement because there was no evidence we prevented infection at all. There are some monoclon antibodies that have been developed that can prevent infection, but these vaccines don't prevent infection. Final question.

When you saw that people were being censored for saying that the virus maybe comes from a lab, what did you make of that censorship campaign? Well, I was very disappointed. Since I was the one who originally in Sanjoupta and CNN came out and said, I thought the virus came from a Chinese lab. And he really drilled me. And I immediately got targeted. I mean, articles were written that I was an Asian racist because I gave my scientific opinion.

In the state of Maryland, House and Senate passed resolution censoring me as a racist because I gave my scientific opinion. And it was definitely censored. The wet market was set up as a roost, really supported by the NIH leadership, Fauci and Collins, but also the scientific immunity in general. Because they didn't want the attention to be on the science. they wanted the attention to be you know you know SARS and MERS were just they came out of some bat that went to some animal intermediate and into humans very unfortunate very wrong and as you point out obviously self-serving and one of the hearings where Tony got really mad and lost his temper he said you know Senator Paul you're accusing because he said he didn't do gain of function research which is not true Tony had the definition was modified by the Institute of medicine. So if you start with a pathogen that's pathogenic for humans and make it more pathogenic for humans, that's gain of function. But if you start with a pathogen that's non-pathogenic for humans like SARS or COVID and make it pathogenic by definition, they say, well, that's not

gain of function. Of course it's gain of function. You taught it how to infect humans. So a lot of game being played and very unfortunate. I'm very disappointed with the scientific. community that they orchestrated that proximal origin paper, which is a fraudulent paper, should be retracted. All of those authors should be under investigation for scientific misconduct because it's not a true, it's not a true paper. But it immediately became one of the most quoted papers in the history of scientific literature. Dr. Redfield, thank you so much for coming on. This has been fascinating to hear your firsthand accounts from all these very significant moments that impacted all of our lives.

so much. Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it. That was Dr. Robert Redfield, former CDC director and colleague of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire. What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today.