Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins sang during an anti-Trump rally in video posted on social media Friday.
Collins, who retired in December 2021 after he was appointed in 2009 by then-President Barack Obama, came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for trying to shut down “The Great Barrington Declaration,” which criticized the COVID-19 lockdowns. Collins joined a “Stand Up For Science” protest that aired on CSPAN2, where he attempted to lead the protesters in a song and teach them lyrics. (RELATED: ”This Can’t Be Possible’: Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC Guest Go Off The Rails After Trump Nominates RFK Jr. For HHS)
“You got that, so it’s all the good people, but the second line, part of this family, the last line, we’re joined together by this noble dream. Do that with me,” Collins said before breaking into the song.
WATCH:
During Collins’ tenure as director of NIH, the agency funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China via EcoHealth Alliance. Collins refused to answer questions publicly about WIV’s research, even though a lab leak at WIV is suspected to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collins also called for the government to “track down” sources of alleged misinformation, saying that those involved should face “some kind of justice.”
Collins also emailed Dr. Anthony Fauci about The Great Barrington Declaration, a document authored by Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya in October 2020 that called for a shift from the lockdowns to “focused protection” of those most vulnerable to the disease.
“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the [Health] Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford,” Collins wrote in an Oct. 8, 2020, email to Dr. Anthony Fauci. “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?”
Fauci was pardoned by then-President Joe Biden shortly before President Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Trump nominated Bhattacharya, who received the Bradley Prize in May 2024, to be director of the National Institutes of Health Jan. 20.
Collins previously displayed singing talents with a parody of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” in December 2021.
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