‘Special Report’ All-Star Panel on Biden ordering COVID origin review, infrastructure negotiations

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Mollie Hemingway: Media played big roll in lab-leak criticism

'Special Report' All-Star panel discuss Biden administration ordering review of COVID origins

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," May 26, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, HOST: Let's bring in our panel early. Harold Ford Jr., former Tennessee congressman, CEO Of Empowerment Inclusion Capital. Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at the Federalist and Bill Bennett former Education Secretary and host of the Bill Bennett Show podcast.

Bill, start with you, you heard Jennifer's report and Peter about really what changed to produce this announcement that this investigation is going to move forward today.

BILL BENNETT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, we don't know. We don't know what the president saw. I found interesting in that report, by the way, some aggressiveness of the part of the press. Have they perhaps heard the siren call of objectivity now that there can be aggressive questioning of the Biden administration? If so, I hope so.

Look, we don't know what he heard. We did know this much, there was a vested interest on the part of the Biden administration in denying the truth of anything Donald Trump said.

I mentioned this the other night. The other thing, of course, is the stonewalling by China from the very beginning about what happened and how this occurred.

Now, it'd be good if the president would push President Xi a little bit. But you just saw in your report that the White House was reluctant to admit that any conversation had taken place.

Let's talk about what we do know. We do know that they knew they had a deadly virus would not let their own people travel inside their country but would let them go out and export this virus to other countries. That doesn't make their culpability look very good, makes their culpability very likely. And I think even opens the possibility of it being more likely that they had something to do with the origins.

Seems to me the burden of proof is on them, given their behavior once they knew what it was they were dealing with however, it was created.

BAIER: Yes, which was the case in March of 2020. Really, I mean, that exact fact pattern and that exact fact that the U.S. Intelligence officials knew that China was covering it up with everything they had.

Meantime, Beijing today, to quote The Wall Street Journal, Beijing, meanwhile, told an annual gathering of the World Health Organization's decision-making body Tuesday that it considered the investigation in its country to be complete and said attention should now turn to other countries.

In other words, they're going to launch their own investigation of where the coronavirus started, Mollie.

BENNETT: Switzerland.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I think It's not just that the Biden administration couldn't have Donald Trump having said anything true, the media really play a role here, too.

You just pointed out, Bret, this is what we knew a year ago, and (AUDIO GAP) thought that there were two options. Basically, you can blame China for how they handled this, you know, viruses can come from anywhere, but how you handle them is key. And there were so many problems with how China handled this, even if you leave aside that it was always a strong possibility that it came out of this Wuhan Institute of Virology. They couldn't let Donald Trump or Mike Pompeo be right. And, so they couldn't even be curious about those origins.

This is a massive scandal. This is something that affected the entire world, hundreds of millions of people, you know, it destroyed the economy, put so many people out of work, it killed millions of people, it's sickened so many people. There should be global focus on just finding out what happens that it can't happen again, holding people accountable for what mistakes were made.

Yesterday, Biden administration says they're just going to let WHO, the World Health Organization handle it. We already know that they're too compromised by China, that was part of the problem last year when they were just taking what China said and regurgitating it about how there wasn't human to human transmission, or how you didn't need to wear masks or how travel bans weren't necessary.

You know, we really need people to think through everything here. But we already kind of know what we need to know in terms of who's culpable.

BAIER: Yes, as far as China's transparency, take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID FEITH, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: We have had a terrible failure for 15 months to recognize as a public and broadly as a U.S. government the plausibility of the lab leak possibility and the huge importance for future public health and for future national security.

JEAN-PIERRE: We've gotten this question about the origins and we've been pretty vocal, right? This administration, we didn't have access, you know, China wasn't transparent enough. We have been saying that for a very long time.

RUBIO: There was no way that the Chinese Communist Party is going to turn over any of the information that would be needed in order to have a serious investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Harold, some people may ask, why is this important? Why does it matter? And if China is somehow culpable or covering up what was a lab accident from that lab, there are a lot of questions about what that means, retribution-wise. But then, there's the question about how we've handled it, and we've dismissed it. What else are we dismissing?

HAROLD FORD JR., FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's good to be on with you. Good evening.

I think that it's important for the investigation to take place. And I agree with some of the things that have been said already. But I think the most important thing is this, as we think about organizing our allies and partners, and even some around the world who don't necessarily agree with us all the time. If we're able to get to the bottom of this with facts and attribute and find out the origins of how this started, that certainly helps.

I give Dr. Fauci a lot of credit for saying, I might have been a little wrong. I'm now wanting to correct that. I think we need more of that in public life, certainly in politics and I would argue in business as well.

In three to 90-day limit that the president has put around this, whether or not he dismissed this from the beginning because of politics, I don't know. I doubt that because I know how serious inexperience he is in foreign policy and intelligence matters. But even if you believe there was politics played at the beginning of this and the president -- this president dismissing the investigation because of his feelings of the former president, you have to give credit for this administration saying now is the time to do this right.

I don't subscribe to that theory. I think this is the right thing to be doing. And I take President Biden in his word when he was candidate. He said from the outset, Peter Doocy's reporting pointed out, he would have figured out a way to get into China early on to figure out what the origins were, what the world needed to be concerned about.

And if indeed, they had some way to cure this, that they were holding on to themselves, we'll find that out as this investigation unfold, I believe.

BAIER: Bill, last thing. I mean, we had this media montage that was almost a minute of all these different figures in the media discounting this, calling it a conspiracy from the very beginning and really pointing back to President Trump.

Final word on this, that does have an effect collectively on a story like this that now, they're all having to kind of go the other way.

BENNETT: Yes, I don't see a lot of apologies out there mea culpas, but they better sure go the other way. Because as Mollie pointed out, you know, you had a journalist the other night on the show, say, well, if China did this on purpose, they got a black eye. This isn't a black eye, this was a world catastrophe and all attention needs to be focused here. And the press needs to understand the importance of it and live up to the standard of that importance by its own reporting.

BAIER: All right panel, thank you. We'll see you a little later in the show.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D-IL) SENATE MAJORITY WHIP: If we're serious about infrastructure in this country and want to prepare to be competitive in the 21st century, we shouldn't do it halfhearted. The Republicans need to do better.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Which route to take, a lonely road leading to the far left versus a mainstream, bipartisan road leading straight ahead toward practical policies that make Americans' lives actually better.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY, (R-IA): The most important thing isn't the money. It's that we don't have non-infrastructure things in the bill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, it sounds like there's a bit of an impasse up on Capitol Hill. We'll see if they can get it together as far as negotiating.

We have some new FOX polls. I'll show those to you in a minute. I want to welcome back our panel, Mollie, Harold, and Bill. Bill, there was progress, or it seemed like there was progress about the negotiation. But, as often happens, lawmakers go to their corners. And we'll see if they can pull this thing out.

BILL BENNETT, FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY: Yes, the president has had to give a fair amount. There's all sorts of back and forth going on, proposals being put forward, numbers out, then numbers back, doesn't look like there is a meeting on the minds on the numbers.

I agree with Senator Durbin, shouldn't have a halfhearted approach to infrastructure, but shouldn't have half-baked approach either. Infrastructure should be about infrastructure. The president, I think, is now -- is more in doubt that he will get what he wants or anything like what he wanted, and that's partly because of the polls, which I think you're going to present again. The Biden ship is taking on water, and the Republicans know that. The Democrats know that he has got less leverage than he did those first 100 days.

BAIER: On certain issues, Bill, but let's take a look at the overall job performance in this latest FOX News poll. This is number three. President Biden's approval rating is at 54 percent. And this is what it was in April of 2021. But, if you look at other issues here, number four most important issue facing the country, that is 23 percent, the economy. You see coronavirus going down.

This is what you are talking about here, the job performance on various issues. And there you see foreign policy, border security, immigration, are underwater if you look at FOX News poll 5. There you go. Foreign policy, border security, immigration -- still seeing significant approval in the coronavirus. But this is interesting, Joe Biden on the issues, number six, is he too liberal or about right? And too liberal had a significant uptick since December of 2019. Harold, your thoughts on these numbers and where they stand?

HAROLD FORD JR., FORMER TENNESSEE REPRESENTATIVE: Well, he came into office wanting to focus on coronavirus, vaccine distribution. The numbers suggest that he has done that. You point to how that is going -- I can't see the polling data in front of me. But I have to think they now understand.

And I would differ with Secretary Bennett just slightly here. President Biden has laid out $1.7, $1.8 trillion as a target. Now it was two-and-a- quarter, so he has come down. The Republicans have put forward one. So we are in a zone here where we can get something done.

I think this president realizes that a bipartisan solution here is more sustainable, and I think he is focused on that. That is who he is as he was a senator, and even as he ran he was a moderate. So I think we may be closer than we think. We have got to let the edges kind of make their noise and make their points here, but I sense a deal could be reached here sooner than we think. And it may not include the big tax hikes that some have feared.

BAIER: Mollie, it's interesting to see those immigration numbers, border security numbers considering the fact that very few places are really covering the border like we do, like a few other places do. It doesn't break through in the day-to-day mainstream media stories. And yet, it is seeing those numbers drop like a rock.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Right, I think maybe the reality of the situation breaks through even though the media coverage is so sycophantic and supportive of President Biden. I tend not to put too much in polls having lived through 2016 and 2020.

BAIER: Fair point.

HEMINGWAY: -- see how off they were. But I thought it was interesting that you are seeing uptick in people who say that he is too liberal. And I do think that the 2020 campaign we were told that Joe Biden would be very moderate, and that he did in his inauguration, he wanted to be a unifier. And then you look at these policies, and if that were true it would be very easy to have unifying policies.

You look at the infrastructure. There is really not an issue on which there is so much consensus, the need for infrastructure. You have a whole host of Republican senators who are more than happy to work with President Biden, and I'm not just talking about Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or Mitt Romney but many others as well. The fact that he can't build together a compromise shows that he is not governing as a moderate or a centrist but as a far left person who is beholden to the far left of his party. And you see that in how he actually handles the border situation, which is not pleasing to loot of people.

HEMINGWAY: A lot of testimony today from Wall Street titans, among them Jamie Dimon, talking about inflation. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to have a very strong economy as all that spending takes place. But, yes, it will raise inflation. I think there is nothing wrong with 1.6 percent. I would expect it to go considerably higher than that. Hopefully it won't be out of whack and the Federal Reserve will be able to tamp it down. But the very important part of this is whatever money we spend, that we spend wisely. If that money is wasted, is not productively spent, we will have more inflation, less productivity, slower growth, and the American democracy will have lost even more credibility in the eyes of the worlds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: I have got 30 section seconds here, but the U.S. government doesn't have a great track record of spending money wisely.

BENNETT: Yes. Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, Larry Summers, all Biden people, all are sending the same warnings. Lookout, the ship is taking on water, a lot of water.

BAIER: All right, when we come back, tomorrow's headlines tonight with the panel. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel. Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: Yes, my headline is what David Chipman, who is Joe Biden's nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, said in his confirmation hearing he would like to ban the AR-15, that is literally the most popular gun platform in the country owned by tens of millions of families, and a real sign of how aggressive Biden would like to be against gun rights.

BAIER: One to watch. Bill?

BENNETT: Yes. I correct myself earlier. The analogy is not taking on water when we talk about these spending bills. It's there is a torpedo around and it's named inflation. That's what he needs to look out for. That's what the liberal economists are warning.

Headline, a year after Floyd is dead, George Floyd is dead, some solemnity, some commemoration, but mostly murder and mayhem throughout American cities. Some solemnity, some commemoration. Not a good tribute.

BAIER: Harold?

FORD: The passing of Senator John Warner, the late senator and Navy secretary, makes us long for his conscience, his negotiating skills, and his brand of patriotism. The country and our politics would be a lot better.

BAIER: Panel, thank you very much.  

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