Trump is looking to blame China for his failure…

The scientific consensus is that this is a naturally occurring virus, and it likely started with human-animal contact at the market in Wuhan…

But lets assume that it escaped from a lab that was studying it- what difference does it make?
How would that absolve him of his guilt in not acting sooner? Wasting months while claiming it was a hoax…

This is a lame attempt at a distraction… and will only make things worse… we will likely need chinese facilities or supplies to turn out vaccines, and with the largest blow to our economy in history, is THIS the time for a trade war?

Donald Trump claims to have seen evidence to substantiate the unproven theory that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that the virus was “not manmade or genetically modified”.

“We’re going to see where it comes from,” Trump said at a White House event on Thursday. “We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others. We’re going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer eventually. And China might even tell us.”

Pressed to explain what evidence he had seen that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

Prior to the White House event, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of US spy agencies, issued a statement asserting that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified”.

“The intelligence community 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,” the statement added.

Trump is increasingly making Beijing’s handling of the outbreak a major issue for his November re-election campaign and has repeatedly threatened retaliation against Beijing.

When asked on Thursday night about reports that he could cancel US debt obligations to China, Trump said he could “do it differently” and act in “probably a little bit more of a forthright manner.”

“I could do the same thing but even for more money, just putting on tariffs,” he said.

Despite a truce in the long-running trade war between Washington and Beijing reached in January, tariffs are already in place on two-thirds of trade between the economic powers.

The president and his allies have repeatedly touted the theory – for which there is no evidence – that an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the center of the Chinese outbreak, was the source of the global pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 worldwide.

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After initially praising the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, Trump has reversed course in recent weeks, blaming China for not containing the virus more quickly.

At the White House event to address the government’s efforts to protect seniors during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump said: “I don’t want to cast any dispersions [sic], I just will tell you that China would like to see sleepy Joe Biden” win the presidential election in November. “China doesn’t want to see me re-elected.”