Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., means no disrespect to National Institutes of Health director-nominee Jay Bhattacharya, a prominent early critic of COVID-19 lockdowns, but his confirmation hearing is pointless.

The self-described democratic socialist and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee made the declaration at Bhattacharya's confirmation hearing Wednesday morning, asserting that President Trump won't give Bhattacharya or any agency head any real authority.

"The real person in charge of all these federal agencies is Mr. Elon Musk," Sanders said in his opening statement while repeatedly assuring Bhattacharya he wasn't criticizing the Stanford medical professor. 

The Musk-directed Department of Government Efficiency has already terminated 1,200 NIH employees and frozen nearly all of its grant money, including research on "potential cures" for cancer and Alzheimer's, Sanders said.

He said the average price for new treatments resulting from NIH research is $111,000, far more than other countries' citizens pay for the same treatments. "We do the research, we pay for it as taxpayers, and then we get ripped off by the companies," and Trump won't give Bhattacharya the authority to stop the "greed" of Big Pharma, Sanders said.