Anthony Fauci Changes His Mind On The Coronavirus Origin, CNN's Twisted Into A Pretzel

CNN commentator Chris Cillizza could barely contain his excitement in May 2020 when his hero, Dr. Anthony Fauci, went on the offensive against then-President Donald Trump over a theory that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan, China laboratory. At that point of the pandemic, Trump said he had a "high degree of confidence" that the virus originated in a lab, and the blue checkmarks lost their minds over such a suggestion because Fauci started doing interviews saying it wasn't possible.

In an interview published May 4, 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that this virus had to be the work of nature.

"If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated ... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that evolved in nature and then jumped species," Fauci told the magazine.

Cillizza then wrote, "remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it's not Donald Trump."

CNN cheerleading Fauci crushing Trump over the Wuhan lab theory in May 2020:

May 4, 2020 headline from National Geographic:

Now let's fast forward to May 24, 2021. CNN's Cillizza is back on the Fauci-Wuhan lab beat doing his best to defend his scientific hero. Fauci has now flip-flopped on the whole lab thing, and it has Cillizza and fellow blue checkmarks twisted into a pretzel.

"I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened," Fauci said during an interview with PolitiFact's editor Katie Sanders.

"Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus," Fauci added.

A year later, Tony Fauci has changed his mind and appears to be de-crushing his 2020 crushing: