(PresidentialInsider.com)- During a Fox News Townhall event in late April 2020, President Trump said he had seen information from the intelligence community that gives him a “high degree of confidence” that the COVID-19 virus originated in a lab.
And in one voice, the American corporate news media made it its mission to “prove” Trump wrong.
Naturally, they went to Dr. Anthony Fauci who, as always, told them exactly what they wanted to hear. In an interview with National Geographic a week after Trump’s townhall statement, Fauci said the evidence is “very, very strongly leaning” toward the unlikelihood the virus was “artificially or deliberately manipulated.”
CNN’s Chris Cillizza eagerly shared the news in an article titled “Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump’s theory on the origins of the coronavirus.”
It wasn’t “Trump’s theory.” The “theory” was based on information from the intelligence community.
But Cillizza wasn’t alone. The entire “mainstream” media hopped aboard the claim that “Trump’s theory” was the wrong one.
Now that that the lab-leak theory is starting to look more credible, the American news media has some explaining to do.
And over the weekend, ABC News reporter Jon Karl tried his hand at doing that explaining.
On ABC’s This Week, Karl admitted that a lot of reporters have “egg on their face.” But he explained that because Trump was saying it, reporters doubted its veracity. Why? Well, according to Karl, because Trump also called the COVID virus the “China virus.”
“Some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them” – ABC’s @JonKarl re origin of COVID-19 pandemic. #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/voC1ISBv4X
— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) May 30, 2021
Karl is incorrect here. President Trump never referred to COVID-19 as “Kung Flu.” That tall tale originated in mid-March 2020 from CBS White House reporter Weijia Jiang who tweeted a claim that an unnamed White House official referred to coronavirus as the “Kung Flu” to her face.
But just as they did in attacking the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine because Trump endorsed it, Karl is admitting they did the same thing regarding the lab leak theory.
Howard Kurtz also tackled this issue on Sunday’s Fox News Media Buzz.
.@MZHemingway says the media dismissed the Wuhan lab theory in an effort to oust Trump from power and make the pandemic all "Trump's fault" @LeslieMarshall says the problem was a lack of "scientific evidence" and contrary views by experts #Mediabuzz https://t.co/VBg8eNk3ZJ
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) May 30, 2021
Last week on CNN’s New Day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claimed that it was Trump and Pompeo who politicized the lab leak theory.
But as Mollie Hemingway pointed out on Media Buzz, the American corporate media chose to dismiss the theory because they didn’t want any story that might mitigate their claim that the pandemic raging in the US was entirely the fault of President Trump.
So who exactly was politicizing it?
