POMPEO, YOU ARE LYING ABOUT THE WUHAN SITUATION. BUSTED. This is asinine
Here we go again. Recall the 2003 WMD fiasco in Iraq? Politicized Intel. Wow.
First of all see this
Intelligence Community Statement on Origins of COVID-19
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of the Director of National Intelligence today issued the following Intelligence Community (IC) statement:(dated April 20, 2020)
“The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China. The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.
“As we do in all crises, the Community’s experts respond by surging resources and producing critical intelligence on issues vital to U.S. national security. The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Next, see Pompeo
QUOTE
Trump Promises ‘Conclusive’ U.S. Report on Virus’s China Origins
By Jordan Fabian and Jennifer Jacobs
May 3, 2020, 10:20 AM EDT Updated on May 3, 2020, 11:21 PM EDT
- President declines to criticize Xi but says China failed
- Pompeo earlier said ‘enormous evidence’ points to China
President Donald Trump promised a “conclusive” report from the U.S. government on the Chinese origins of the coronavirus outbreak, adding that he has little doubt that Beijing misled the world about the scale and risk of the disease before it became a global pandemic.
“We will be giving a very strong report on what we think happened, and I think it will be very conclusive,” Trump said during a “virtual town hall” hosted by Fox News on Sunday, after he was asked about evidence the virus is related to research conducted in a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
“Personally, I think they made a very horrible mistake,” Trump said of the Chinese. “They tried to cover it, they tried to put it out.”
Earlier Sunday, the Associated Press reported that U.S. officials believe China covered up the extent of the outbreak, in part, to stock up on medical supplies needed to respond to it. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said “enormous evidence” shows the Covid-19 outbreak began in the Wuhan laboratory, but didn’t provide any proof for his claims.
The president’s comments come as U.S.-China tensions climb amid the rising death toll from the virus in the U.S., which has the highest reported numbers of infections and deaths of any country, despite the outbreak first spreading more quickly in Asia and Europe. More than 67,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S. so far, out of a reported 247,000 worldwide.
“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”
The White House’s deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, is scheduled to speak on the U.S. relationship with China on Monday in a webinar hosted by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Pottinger’s remarks will champion democracy and freedom in China and won’t directly address intelligence on the virus, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Pottinger will deliver part of his remarks in Mandarin, the person said, calling it a first for a senior U.S. official.
While the Wuhan Institute of Virology was studying bat-borne coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 at the time of the first known outbreak nearby, there has so far been no evidence showing it possessed the previously unknown strain. Yuan Zhiming, director of the facility’s high-security Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, said last month that “there is absolutely no way that the virus originated from our institute.”
Pompeo stopped short of saying the virus was man-made, noting that he agreed with a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that ruled out genetic modification of the pathogen.
“I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said,” Pompeo said. “I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.”
Pompeo declined to say whether the Chinese intentionally released the virus. “I don’t have anything to say about that,” he said.
‘Strong’ Leader
In his town hall event Sunday, Trump declined to directly criticize Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling him a “strong” leader who he struck a trade deal with just as the outbreak was spreading.
“I’m not going to say anything,” Trump responded when asked about Xi. “I had a very good relationship with him.”
Although China has reprimanded Wuhan police for punishing doctors who sounded early warnings about the disease and replaced local officials responsible for the initial outbreak, Beijing says its response has been open and transparent. China’s foreign ministry has cited Trump’s tweets praising Xi’s handling of the outbreak as evidence of U.S. satisfaction with its response.
Trump and his aides sharpened their criticism of Beijing last week, demanding answers about the virus’s origin. The president tweeted Friday that some U.S. television networks were “Chinese puppets,” while his super-political action committee unleashed anti-China ads.
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
Concast (@NBCNews) and Fake News @CNN are going out of their way to say GREAT things about China. They are Chinese puppets who want to do business there. They use USA airwaves to help China. The Enemy of the People!
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11:27 AM - May 1, 2020
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“China behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse,” Pompeo said on ABC. “It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.”
The secretary said China continued to block access by health experts from the WHO, as well as U.S. scientists, from getting access to samples of the virus needed for study.
“This is an ongoing threat, an ongoing pandemic,” Pompeo said. “The Chinese Communist Party continues to block access to the Western world, the world’s best scientists, to figure out exactly what happened.”
— With assistance by Steve Geimann, Anna Waters, and Nick Wadhams
END OF QUOTE
YOU ARE LYING , POMPEO. GIVE IT UP
What does Trump gain? Trump wants to blame the Wuhan lab, for this problem while pretending to be deferential to Xi of China. Ahem, this is where a lie is not going to cut it.
ANDREW BECKWITH, PHD