White House accused of downplaying Wall Street Journal's COVID lab leak report
The 'Outnumbered' panel discusses past media coverage mocking the COVID lab leak theory and the Biden White House's claim that there is no consensus on the origins of the virus.
Former Bush White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen slammed the liberal media Tuesday on "Outnumbered," arguing that they rejected the COVID lab leak theory in 2020 because it would have distracted from blaming then-President Trump.
"I'll tell you why they did this… because this was happening during the 2020 election, and any effort to blame China was seen as deflecting from blaming Donald Trump. The goal was to blame Donald Trump, so they could win the election," the Fox News contributor argued.
His comments came on the heels of the Wall Street Journal's bombshell report into the COVID lab leak theory released Sunday, which claimed a classified intelligence report provided to the White House stated the Energy Department's conclusion that the long-dismissed theory was most likely the virus' actual origin.
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Members of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (REUTERS/Thomas Peter)
Thiessen, who criticized the natural release theory, which claims the virus originated from bats sold at a nearby wet market in Wuhan, pointed to the evidence for the virus coming from the lab in Wuhan.
"You have to be living under a rock not to realize this came from the Wuhan lab. I mean, think about it, this happened in Wuhan which is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they were doing research on bat coronaviruses, they were doing it at biosafety level two – which is like your dentist's office – as opposed to biosafety level four which is like space suits.
"We know that the SARS-1 virus escaped four times from the Beijing Institute of Virology, so we've had Chinese lab leaks before, and three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology went to the hospital with COVID symptoms in November 2019, so we know that they got sick from it."
He added that there is "zero evidence" that the virus came from a natural origin.
Despite the Wall Street Journal's bombshell report, the Biden White House maintains that there is "not a consensus" in the U.S. government about the virus' origins, according to the National Security Council's Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby.
Kirby told Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich Monday that, "[Biden] made trying to find the origins of COVID a priority."
"He's got a whole government effort designed to do that," he added.
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