Although the liberal-left media and Democratic leaders harshly criticized President Donald Trump in 2020 when he said he had seen evidence indicating that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Communist China, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded in a recent report that the "COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak," reported the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 26.
Apparently, Trump was right and the leftist media were wrong.
During an April 30, 2020 press conference, Fox News' White House Correspondent John Roberts asked then-President Trump, "[H]ave you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?"
Trump replied, "Yes, I have -- yes, I have and I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they're like the Public Relations Agency for China. And this country pays them almost $500 million a year and China pays them $38 million a year."
"And whether it's a lot or more, doesn't matter, it's still -- they shouldn't be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes, especially mistakes that are causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die," said Trump.
"I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves," he added.
CNN's Jim Sciutto quickly reported "on the president's effort, broader effort to blame China for the outbreak.... If anything we're seeing a greater focus on attacking, well, certainly attacking China...."
On CBS' The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert said, "As part of his blame China initiative, Trump’s been pushing unsubstantiated claims that the disease started in a laboratory in Wuhan. And yesterday, his conspiracy theory got the support of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seen here doing his de Niro. Pompeo sat down on This Week this week and told host Martha Raddatz that he believes Trump’s theory."
As reported by NewsBusters, CBS' Norah O'Donnell "suggested that the only reason the Trump administration was blaming China was to shift blame for the rising death toll from themselves."
O'Donnell, on May 4, 2020, reported, "A draft government document projects the U.S. daily deaths could nearly double by June 1st. And it comes as President Trump and his secretary of state say there's evidence a Wuhan, China represent lab is the source of the outbreak. That's the conclusion at odds with U.S. intelligence."
CBS' Ben Tracy asserted, "Under fire for his handling of the virus response, the President is now frequently pinning the blame on China for not containing it early on.”
"President Trump is threatening China with more tariffs, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now backing the president's claim that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, even though the U.S. intelligence community has not reached that conclusion," said Tracy. "They do say the virus was not man-made."
On ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host mocked, "He [Trump] is also pushing U.S. Intelligence to find evidence for this theory that the virus was accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan. That's his new angle to feed the wingnuts, to treat this virus like it was a conspiracy of some kind.... Tomorrow he’ll blame the Spanish flu on Antonio Banderas."
In addition to the Wuhan lab issue, in the spring of 2020 Trump had often referred to COVID as the Wuhan virus or the China virus, for which the media scolded him.
For instance, CNN's Chris Cuomo said in March 2020, "The idea, ‘well it did come from China.’ Then why doesn't Fauci and other top health officials, why don’t they call it that? You know why? Because it could have come from anywhere.”
“It's not about where it started. All right?" claimed Cuomo. "This doesn't help. Calling it a ‘foreign virus.’ We're all in the fight together. Stop it."
Politico mocked Trump's view on the origin of the virus, as well as his followers, stating, "In recent days, President Donald Trump’s allies have seized upon an alternate origin story for the novel coronavirus: that the disease emerged from inside a Chinese laboratory, not an outdoor market."
"Somehow, the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first appeared in late 2019," said Politico. "Scientists are largely skeptical of the idea, as are top defense officials, but it has given the president’s supporters an alluring new talking point as they seek to deflect blame for the pandemic’s brutal toll on the United States."
Still flogging Trump in April 2021, ABC News reported, “A team of scientists from the World Health Organization allowed into China. They now say it is, quote, ‘extremely unlikely,’ that that virus escaped from that Wuhan research lab."
CBS Evening News in 2021 reported, "[I]nvestigators with the World Health Organization are shooting down the theory that the coronavirus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. They say the virus likely jumped to humans from an animal."
Despite the leftist media attacks on Trump about the Wuhan lab, the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 26, 2023: "The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress."
"The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory," reported The Journal. "The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research."