Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) defended Dr. Anthony Fauci on CNN after the former NIAID director was grilled at a Senate hearing led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Wednesday. Kim said the hearing was “set up” to attack him and “further” any legal problems the former government official would have. “Any type of crisis situation, there’s always going to be challenges of clarity,” Kim told CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “I’ve worked in war and conflict. No one has perfect judgment. And so, yes, there are going to be some issues on that front, but it shouldn’t be something that we hold against someone individually in such a way like we saw today.”

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Take us inside the room here because this clearly was very personal between Senator Paul and Dr. Fauci. SEN. ANDY KIM (D-NJ): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, the first thing I’ll just say is what didn’t happen, which is that at a time when our country is at war with Iran, at a time when we have natural disasters and FEMA’s withholding funding for states, especially blue states from getting the funding that they need, this is where Chairman and the Homeland Security and the Congressional Republicans wanted to spend their time. This was just performative governance at its worst, trying to dig up someone who is no longer in office at a time when we have such priorities that are there. Clearly a vendetta that was meant to be done. And look, when it’s going against somebody who has been leading up a federal agency before for 38 years, was appointed by Ronald Reagan, served under seven presidents, four of them Republican presidents. This is somebody who was a public servant. And the fact that we were wasting time on this rather than dealing with issues that the American people are demanding us focusing on, like the war, that’s really just a waste of our time. HUNT: Would you have encouraged Dr. Fauci to handle this any differently? Do you think he generated additional problems for himself by, you saw in that exchange, answering every question the way that he did? KIM: Look, I’m not an attorney. I don’t know how best to be able to navigate that. But what I do know is that this was set up for them to be able to attack him one way or another. So regardless of whether he was answering the questions or did what he did today, the attacks were going to be there. And clearly it was something that was meant to try to trip him up, trying to further any type of legal problems that he would have down the road. And again, just the fact that this is how we’re using our time at a time when we’re seeing real problems with the stock market today, other things, it’s just so out of touch with what the American people are asking us to focus on. HUNT: Just finally, before we move to some of those other topics, do you feel confident that you understand the full scope of what the government knew, didn’t know, and did and didn’t tell the American people during the pandemic? KIM: Well, look, certainly there’s going to be more that we need to do. After any type of crisis, we should be having the type of research and analysis after 9/11, after any crisis. I was on the select committee on the coronavirus crisis during the pandemic. So certainly I saw many officials come before us, say, giving us their best judgment, but all of them said, there’s no perfect clarity when you’re in the midst of a pandemic. This was a novel virus. They didn’t know how it was going to, each strand, how it was going to be effective. They didn’t know fully how the vaccines were going to, and they let us know that. And it wasn’t just Dr. Fauci, it was everybody. HUNT: And you feel like they were saying the same thing in public as they had been saying in private? KIM: At least in terms of what I saw, yes. And I think that, but again, any type of crisis situation, there’s always going to be challenges of clarity. I’ve worked in war and conflict. No one has perfect judgment. And so, yes, there are going to be some issues on that front, but it shouldn’t be something that we hold against someone individually in such a way like we saw today.

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