The pint-size patron saint of the failed restrictionist policies that lefties and COVID crazies love simply can't admit he's lost a massive argument with reality.

The Not-So-Good Doctor got off to a weak start in DC, surprising House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chair Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) with "how much he doesn't recall" from the start of the pandemic. 

How convenient! 

Fauci, after all, led the effort in the early days of the pandemic to quash the idea (now regarded as probable by the feds) that COVID sprang from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — throwing his considerable weight behind efforts to smear and suppress anyone who dared to dissent. 

That's after he admitted in private he took it seriously.

Anthony Fauci arrives for a closed-door interview with the House Select Subcommittee in January. Getty Images

And before COVID even hit, he was passing funds to the WIV via the EcoHealth Alliance as the NIH helped pay for gain-of-function research there. 

All great stuff to forget. 

Then there's the anti-COVID policies he championed: social distancing and vaccine mandates for schools and businesses. 

On some of it, Fauci seems finally to have come clean. Per Wenstrup, he "claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come."