Kelley Paul, wife of Sen. Paul, shuts down CNN host, who called Paul an 'a**' after explosive new NIH letter released

Kelley Paul, the wife of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), shut down CNN host Brianna Keilar Friday after the National Institutes of Health seemingly admitted in a new letter the agency did, in fact, fund gain-of-function research at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.

What happened?

After the publication of the NIH letter — which contradicts what Dr. Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins have claimed — Kelley Paul called out Keilar and CBS host Gayle King.

"While Rand has been demanding transparency from Fauci for over a year, lowbrow hacks like @brikeilarcnn responded by calling Rand an a** on air. Giggling @GayleKing fangirled Fauci and ridiculed Rand, ignoring the point of his questions," Kelley Paul tweeted. "Have any comments now, Gayle and Brianna?"

In a lengthy response, Keilar not only attempted to downplay the significance of the NIH letter, but doubled down on her criticism of Paul. She said:

I stand by my characterization of Sen. Paul and I'll explain in a moment. But first, on this letter from NIH, some important points: The virus that was studied in this research, per NIH, could not be the SARS virus that causes COVID-19 any more than Sen. Paul could be a chimpanzee. The theory Paul constructs, that Fauci's covering up how covid is a man made virus unleashed on the world by the Obama administration because of a NIH research grant awarded in 2014, is not supported by this letter. It's actually disproven by the information in the letter.

There is alarming new info here though. The NIH says the research by grantee EcoHealth Alliance wasn't aiming to achieve gain-of-function, but it did. That's potentially dangerous and so they were supposed to report it. They didn't until now.

Now to the ass thing. Seeing as Paul is verifiably full of it I do think it's an apt metaphor. He claimed NYC had "community immunity" from covid when the immunity level was estimated at a meager 22%. He told Americans at the height of the pandemic to throw away their masks. Sen. Paul also jeopardized the health of others, visiting the senate gym while awaiting a covid test result that would later turn out positive. And at the height of the pandemic he walked around the senate floor without wearing a mask. He was once very concerned about the pandemic, but not the one that has killed more than 700,000 in the US. The one that killed 1: Ebola. The difference, besides a death toll larger than the size of the population of Denver, was that Ebola happened while a Democrat was president.

Dr. Fauci and American public health officials should answer questions about oversight of this US-funded research. No public official is immune from scrutiny. But Sen. Paul, a bloviator of misinformation, is certainly not the man for that job.

How did Kelley Paul respond?

Clearly, as Keilar's response demonstrated, the CNN host completely missed Paul's point, which was that media members should have been asking the questions that Sen. Paul and other lawmakers have been asking of Fauci for months.

In response, Kelley Paul told Keilar to "look in the mirror" when calling others a "bloviator of misinformation."

"Rand has been the ONLY person asking these questions. Your network certainly wasn't," Paul tweeted. "Yet when he did, you resorted to silly name-calling of Rand instead of reporting on the content of his questions or Fauci's obfuscations. Bloviator of misinformation? Look in the mirror!"

In another tweet, Kelley Paul said that Americans would have learned about the NIH's apparent gain-of-function research funding sooner if journalists actually did what they are paid to do.

"Americans would have learned of this coverup earlier...if biased 'journalists' like @brikeilarcnn hadn't spent their time attacking and name-calling Rand Paul for asking Fauci legitimate questions," Paul said, adding the hashtag "#RandPaulWasRight."