Republican senator challenges union boss to a cage fight
A Republican senator and a union boss exchanged heated remarks in a Senate hearing this past March. Now — if there is any bite to the teamster's bark — there's a chance the two might exchange blows in the octagon.
What's the background?
During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on March 8, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) struck a nerve, intimating that while Sean O'Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, makes close to $200,000 a year, he doesn't bring much "to the table."
Mullin asked the teamster boss, "What do you bring for that salary? ... What job have you created?"
O'Brien suggested the senator was "out of line," then proceeded to call him a "greedy CEO" and accused him of hiding money while running his plumbing company.
Despite sporadic efforts on the part of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to intervene, Mullin hit back at O'Brien, saying, "You think you're smart? You think you're funny? You're not," intimating that the committee witness' combative testimony hinted at the kind of intimidation honest union workers routinely suffer at the hands of teamsters.
Markwayne Mullin Goes Nuclear On Labor Leader In Fiery Hearing On Unions youtu.be
Title fight
After stewing for months, O'Brien took to Twitter on June 21 to accuse Mullin of being "full of sh**," adding, "The more you run your mouth, the more you show the American public what a moron you are."
O'Brien proceeded to repeat his March comments, calling the Oklahoma senator a "Greedy CEO who pretends like he's self made" and a "clown."
The teamster boss went so far as to suggest his openness to fisticuffs, tweeting, "You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy."
Mullin, a Cherokee father of six and undefeated former MMA fighter, accepted the teamster's challenge, letting him know he had three days to agree to turn his typing hands into fists.
"An attention-seeking union Teamster boss is trying to be punchy after our Senate hearing. Okay, I accept your challenge," wrote Mullin. "MMA fight for charity of our choice. Sept 30th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ll give you 3 days to accept."
— (@)
A history of violence
According to Sherdog.com, Mullin won all three of his professional MMA fights in the middleweight class, despite a shoulder injured in his youth.
In November 2006, he won an Xtreme Fighting League bout against Bobby Kelley by submission with a rear-naked choke in 46 seconds.
In February 2007, he took out Clinton Bonds in an XFL SuperBrawl match by submission. He faced Bonds again in April 2007 and defeated him in 1:27 with a total knockout, ensured with punches.
The National Wrestling Hall of Fame indicated that "Mullin did whatever it took to wrestle through elementary and middle school, including switching schools four times after the school he was attending canceled its wrestling program."
In a well-timed Spectator profile released Monday, Ben Domenech suggested that the "veins on Mullin’s arms are the first thing you notice. He’s not built like a senator, he’s built like a man who could leap off the top rope and drive you into the mat. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation, the first Native American in the Senate since the retirement of Colorado’s Ben Nighthorse Campbell in 2005."
Domenech continued, "Ripped, bearded, with a belt buckle the size of a hubcap and a Stetson worn as if he’s had it on since the womb, he looks like Rip Wheeler from Yellowstone’s more ab-focused brother," adding, Mullin is the "most mercurial and unknown member of the Senate."
O'Brien has an opportunity to get to know the allegedly unknown senator a whole lot better.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
'Malicious poison': Hearing gets tense when GOP senator confronts Biden nominee who accused him of 'white supremacy'
Sparks flew Tuesday after Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) confronted Deborah Lipstadt, President Joe Biden’s nominee for special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, for previously accusing Johnson of racism.
What is the background?
Last March, Johnson was decried as a racist for saying that he "wasn’t concerned" about the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In the same interview, Johnson said he would "have been a little concerned" if the rioters were protesters with Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
Lipstadt, a renowned scholar of Jewish history, agreed.
"This is white supremacy/nationalism. Pure and simple," Lipstadt reacted.
What happened Tuesday?
During Lipstadt's Senate confirmation hearing, Johnson confronted her about the year-old remark.
Recalling words from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that social media discourse has become "malicious poison," Johnson asked Lipstadt how she would feel if someone called her a "racist."
In response, Lipstadt claimed that when she engages in criticism, she strives not to "ascribe to the person." In other words, she allegedly engages critically with an argument, not the person making it.
"But that's not true," Johnson fired back.
"What you just testified there is false. Because not only did you go on — first of all, you don’t know me. You don’t know a lot of the people that you have accused online in front of millions of people. You have engaged in the malicious poison," Johnson continued. "Calling somebody a racist is about as serious and vile an accusation as you can hurl over something against somebody you don’t even know. You’ve never talked to me, you’ve never met me. You don’t know what’s in my heart, do you?"
Johnson explained the problem is that Lipstadt was nominated for a nonpartisan government role, yet the manner with which she "engage[d] in malicious poison is purely partisan."
"Do you feel bad about that at all?" Johnson asked Lipstadt of her accusations. "Do you retract that? What's your current position on this?"
Lipstadt then admitted that her accusations were "not nuanced" — and eventually she apologized.
"I would not do diplomacy by tweet. While I may disagree with what you said specifically, and I think that’s a legitimate difference, I certainly did not mean it," Lipstadt said. "And I’m sorry if I made it in a way that it could be assumed to be political — at the person personally.”
Johnson finished his questioning by accepting Lipstadt's apology, but said he would not support her nomination because he believes she demonstrated behavior unbecoming of a U.S. diplomat.
Lipstadt, however, is one of the world's top Holocaust scholars, and she will likely be confirmed to the post with bipartisan support.
Ron Johnson Confronts Witness Who Called Him A White Nationalist www.youtube.com
Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci accuse each other of 'lying' in explosive confrontation over NIH funding for Wuhan lab
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) each accused the other of "lying" in a heated back-and-forth exchange about the National Institute of Health's role in funding the coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
During a Senate Health Committee hearing on the federal government's COVID-19 response, Paul challenged Fauci over comments he made at a previous Senate hearing denying that the NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
Rand Paul just confronted Dr. Fauci over gain of function research and triggered him so bad that he started yelling https://t.co/eHibcZnR9J
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) 1626795379.0
"Dr. Fauci, as you are aware it is a crime to lie to Congress," Paul began when it was his turn to ask questions. "On your last trip to our committee on May 11, you stated that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH."
Paul cited as proof of his claims a 2015 study conducted by Dr. Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, in collaboration with Dr. Shi Zhengli, the chief coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan lab. He said the study, which the authors acknowledged was funded by NIH, used gain-of-function experiments to make a coronavirus sample taken from bats — an entirely different virus from SARS-Cov-2 — transmissible among humans.
Gain-of-function research involves genetically enhancing viral pathogens in order to predict which may become especially dangerous to the human population. The research is controversial because of the risk that a virus previously only found in animals and subsequently altered to infect humans could be released — accidentally or deliberately — and cause a pandemic.
Between 2014 and 2017, the federal government established a moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, but the study Baric and Shi co-authored received approval from NIH after review. The funding received by the Wuhan lab to conduct this research was provided by the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, which had received grants from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led by none other than Dr. Fauci.
"Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans. This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014-2017, a pause in funding on gain-of-function. But the NIH failed to recognize this," Paul said.
The NIAID director was previously aware of the study Paul cited. On Feb. 1, 2020, Fauci sent an email with the study attached to NIAID Principal Deputy Director Hugh Auchincloss amid internal discussions at NIH about the possible origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on ... read this paper as well as the e-mail that I will forward to you now. You will have tasks today that must be done," Fauci wrote to Auchincloss. The email communications were made public as part of a Freedom of Information Act request from BuzzFeed News.
Paul asked if Fauci would like to retract his comments from the May 11 hearing in light of the fact that it appears Fauci authorized sub-grants that were given to EcoHealth Alliance and then transferred to the Wuhan lab for the research published in the 2015 paper, of which he was aware when he testified to Congress.
"Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper, that you're referring to, was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function," Fauci replied.
Interrupting, Paul challenged Fauci's definition of gain-of-function research, which made Fauci visibly angry.
"Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially," he scolded. "You do not know what you are talking about."
Paul interjected again, quoting from a definition of gain-of-function research authored by the NIH and demanding that Fauci explain how the NIH-funded experiments conducted at the Wuhan lab did not meet that definition.
"How can you say that's not gain-of-function?" he asked.
"It is not," Fauci insisted, without elaborating.
"It's a dance and you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic," Paul continued, cutting Fauci off.
Fauci raised his hand in objection to Paul's assertion. "If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded as a sub-award from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2 — that's where you are getting, let me finish," Fauci said as Paul interrupted again.
"We don't know," the senator said, acknowledging that the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus remain unknown. "But all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab and there will be responsibility for those that funded the lab, including yourself," Paul told Fauci.
"I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, senator," Fauci snarled in response.
He said it was "molecularly impossible" for the viruses examined in the 2015 Wuhan study to be related to SARS-CoV-2 or to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing to misinterpret Paul's allegations. Paul countered that he wasn't alleging anything of the sort.
"What we're alleging is that gain-of-function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded it. You can't get away from it, it meets your definition, and you are obfuscating the truth," Paul charged.
"I am not obfuscating the truth, you're the one," replied Fauci. He accused Paul of implying that the NIH grants he authorized were responsible for deaths caused by the pandemic.
"I totally resent that, and if anybody is lying here, senator, it is you," Fauci finished.
Scientists are in disagreement over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many of the world's top scientific experts believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus occurred in nature and evolved to be transmissible among humans, there are others who hypothesize the virus was either obtained and stored in the Wuhan lab or artificially engineered as part of a gain-of-function experiment and subsequently leaked.
The lab-leak hypothesis is growing in mainstream acceptance as scientists have so far failed to find an animal host for SARS-CoV-2, though evidence is far from conclusive for either hypothesis.
Whether the U.S. government funded research at the Wuhan lab that led to the outbreak of the pandemic remains unknown. Fauci's angry denials and his clash with Paul over the technical definition of gain-of-function research did not contribute to answering that question.
Dr. Fauci testifies that only 'a little bit more than half' of NIH employees have been vaccinated
At the hearing last week during which U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci over "gain of function research" in relation to the COVID-19 virus, another rather eye-opening exchange took place but wasn't widely reported.
What are the details?
Toward the end of the nearly three-hour hearing last Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, ranking member U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Fauci what percentage of employees at the National Institutes of Health have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
"What percentage of the employees in your institute ... has been vaccinated?" Burr asked.
Fauci replied, "You know, I'm not 100% sure, senator, but I think it's probably a little bit more than half — probably around 60%."
Burr asked the same question of Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration.
Marks replied, "I can't tell you the exact number, but it's probably in the same range — some people vaccinated at our facility and others ... outside of the facility."
Walensky told Burr that at the CDC, "we're encouraging our employees to get vaccinated, we've been doing town halls and education seminars ... our staff have the option to report their vaccination status, but as you understand, the federal government is not requiring it, so we do not know."
Uh oh
With that, Burr mildly scolded the trio sitting before him: "Listen, you're the face of why people should get vaccinated. And knowing and promoting and confidently giving numbers, percentages. ... Imagine being the parent of a school-age kid who for generations has been required to have their kids vaccinated before they could start school? And the fact that even within our health organizations we can't require that of people ... we're gonna have tough decisions to make."
Burr soon warned Fauci, Marks, and Walensky that "if we're gonna get that last mile coverage, we're gonna have to start portraying that we're willing to do to ourselves what we're asking the American people to do."
WATCH LIVE: Fauci, federal health officials testify about ongoing efforts to combat COVID-19 youtu.be
Anything else?
The momentous Q&A moment came in the wake of recent headline-grabbing statements from those in the public eye who've declared that unvaccinated people should be shunned.
Sunny Hostin of "The View" earlier this month ripped into Americans who've indicated they won't get the COVID-19 vaccine by saying we should "shun" them — and the co-host specifically called out "white evangelicals" and "Republicans."
"When you look at the folks that are not getting vaccinated — because it's a quarter of Americans that aren't getting vaccinated — white evangelicals: 45% say they won't get vaccinated according to ... Pew Research ... almost 50% of Republicans are refusing to get the vaccine," Hostin said. "So we won't reach herd immunity because of those particular groups."
She then added, "So I say we need to shun those that refuse to get vaccinated."
A few days before Hostin's nationally televised takedown, USA Today published an op-ed by a far-left former Justice Department prosecutor titled, "It's time to start shunning the 'vaccine hesitant.' They're blocking COVID herd immunity."
Michael J. Stern wrote that "businesses should make vaccination a requirement for employment" and that "things should get personal, too: People should require friends to be vaccinated to attend the barbecues and birthday parties they host. Friends don't let friends spread the coronavirus."
One wonders if Hostin or Stern would utter their venom to the faces of Fauci, Marks, and Walensky — or in front of the still-unvaccinated employees of the NIH, CDC, or FDA.
www.theblaze.com
freebeacon.com
thefederalist.com
Hawley Leaves Anti-Gun Judicial Nominee STUNNED Using History To Make Her Look Stupid