On Wednesday morning’s episode of the ABC talk show “The View,” cohost Joy Behar rushed to defend her beloved Dr. Anthony Fauci after he was attacked by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) the day before.

While discussing the fiery exchange between the two men that occurred on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Behar was quick to praise Fauci for his experience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with fighting other diseases in the past. Behar went so far as to say that instead of attacking Fauci, Paul should be thanking him for allegedly preventing more COVID-19 deaths.

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“Dr. Fauci … has been running the NIH for 36 years, okay?” Behar falsely claimed. In reality, Fauci only runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the 27 institutes that makes up the NIH, according to Fox News.

Nevertheless, Behar continued on with her rant unchecked.

“He’s helped us through HIV, SARS, bird flu, swine flu, Zika and Ebola, all right?” she added. “Rand Paul is a third-rate party hack who, by the way, got Covid, is lucky to be alive, and then refused to take the vaccine afterwards.”

“If anyone is responsible for all the deaths that have occurred since Covid began, it is more these lying party hacks like Rand Paul who have demonized masks and then demonized vaccines,” Behar said. “He should be thanking Fauci instead of accusing him of murder. My God … This is who people are watching on television, speaking to the most brilliant scientist … who has basically helped us through for 36 years under I think four or five presidents.”

This came after Paul and Fauci each made headlines for their exchange the day before. In their back-and-forth, Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress to “obscure responsibility” for funding the lab that potentially leaked the coronavirus. When asked if he wanted to deny these claims, Fauci claimed that he had no idea what Paul was talking about.

Also on Wednesday, Paul spoke out to say that he will be sending a letter to the Department of Justice calling for a criminal investigation into Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress “to cover his tracks and to cover his connection to Wuhan lab.”

It will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.