The release of the Fauci emails continues to shine a light on the way in which the coronavirus pandemic has been handled by the top White House adviser. Dr. Fauci has worked with seven presidential administrations over his very long career in government service. He has been idolized by the media and its coverage of the pandemic, with Democrats only too happy to go along. The emails provide fodder for his critics to question his performance and Fauci is pushing back.

As soon as the Washington Post and Buzzfeed News published emails acquired through FOIA requests, readers saw with their own eyes some troubling realities. The biggest one was the refusal of the scientific community and Fauci to take seriously the possibility that the virus came from a lab-leak. The preferred narrative from scientists and Fauci was that the virus jumped from an animal to human contamination. No one was willing to point a finger at the Communist Chinese and investigate the possibility of nefarious intentions – the Chinese government could have been developing a biological weapon. The relationship between the NIH and Fauci with grant money from the United States to EcoHealth Alliance is exposed. Fauci insists that the Chinese are trusted partners in the scientific community. Biden has called for some answers as to what the conclusion is from scientists – did the pandemic happen as a result of a lab-leak or did it happen in nature? He has called for a report on a scientific conclusion within 90 days.

Some scientists have come forward in support of the idea that the virus is from a lab-leak. Last month a group of 18 scientists published a letter describing both theories of the origin of the coronavirus as “viable”.

Fauci has been accused of shifting his stance on the possibility of a lab leak. Most scientists continue to believe the virus began in the wild, where it was transmitted to a human, but many health experts, including Fauci, are now forcefully calling for a more rigorous investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last month, a group of 18 prominent scientists published a letter in Science referring to both the lab-leak theory and the zoonotic spillover as “viable” until they collect sufficient data, while the Wall Street Journal reported details of a U.S. intelligence report that found several researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019, weeks before the disease was first identified. The WHO’s initial investigation into the origins of the pandemic found it “extremely unlikely” that the virus escaped from a lab, but the origins of the virus are yet to be concluded.

We are well aware of the flip-flops that we’ve seen from Fauci throughout the pandemic. Fauci has admitted to lying about the percentage of vaccinated people or those with antibodies necessary for herd immunity. He also has owned up to his role in causing confusion in the face mask debate. We were already growing suspicious of him. The longer the pandemic plays out, the more questions of his competency and honesty arise.

After the emails were published this week, Fauci has been in full defensive mode. He is appearing on the usual television shows with sympathetic liberal hosts. Nicolle Wallace slobbered all over Fauci on her MSNBC show. On Friday night, Fauci appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s show. As was predicted, Fauci now says that any critics of him and his performance due to the emails is just an “attack on science.” He aimed his statements at Republican critics. Fauci calls the backlash ” “inappropriate” and “misleading.”

“It’s really very much an attack on science,” Fauci said during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” when asked about the latest attacks targeting him.

“I mean, it is what it is. I’m a public figure, I’m going to take the arrows and the slings, but they’re just — they’re fabricated, and that’s just what it is,” added Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“My job was to make a vaccine and use my institute and these talented scientists that we have there and that we fund in the various universities to get a vaccine that was highly safe and highly effective,” he continued.

“We succeeded,” he said. “All the other stuff is just a terrible, not happy type of distraction. But it’s all nonsense.”

See, he’s not lying about anything, it’s his critics who are lying. The pandemic was politicized from the beginning. It was inevitable because absolutely everything is politicized in life today, including a world health crisis that should have been a unifying event. Remember when Joe Biden was one of the first out of the gate to call Trump’s travel ban an act of xenophobia, a racist reaction to a virus that originated in China? That remark helped set the tone. Even though the early travel bans proved to be good actions to mitigate the spread of the virus, Biden never bothered to acknowledge that. He was more interested in scoring political points with anti-Trumpers. Now Fauci is doing the same – any critics of his performance must be labeled as anti-science mouth breathers.

The criticism of Fauci isn’t over the production of a vaccine. The work of the scientific community to develop and produce not one but several COVID-19 vaccines at record speed has been applauded in all quarters. Fauci is offering up a straw man instead of answering hard questions. And, yes, he needs to man up and face the music from his critics. The buck stops with him for much of the pandemic response. He is only now publicly admitting that yes, it could be that the virus came from a lab. Emails show that he entertained the idea but wouldn’t say so publicly.

Emails between Fauci and others obtained this week by news outlets through public records requests show correspondence from early on in the pandemic raising the possibility that the virus came from a lab. Fauci had cast doubt on the theory publicly, though the emails do not show the scientist outright rejecting the prospect.

“I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human, but I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason, it could have been a lab leak,” Fauci told CNN on Thursday.

Fauci is an arrogant bureaucrat who believes in his own publicity. That attitude does not serve the American taxpayers – the people paying his salary – well. Fauci is playing to his liberal supporters with the anti-science rhetoric. Maddow praised Fauci as a “devoted researcher and scientist.” No one disputes that. The man has made a career of that work. What we do question now is his performance during the pandemic. Maddow said, “People attacking him now appear to be mad at him for the fact that there’s an epidemic at all.” No, Rachel, we’re mad at being lied to and told to do things his way for our own good. His motives in some of the decision-making are perfectly legitimate questions to ask. Fauci’s bruised ego can just deal with it.